Silver for Charon
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: S8 WARNING! HERE BE SPOILERS! This is an alternative view of the season's stories, covering all episodes of S8. It also a partner piece with Through the Never. No slash.
1. Chapter 1 Exit, Stage Right

**Silver for Charon**

* * *

**AN:** _The following story is a non-canon reimagining of Season Eight. Here and there it will go completely AU, in some parts it remains true to the dialogue and story of the episodes. It's an experimental look at the way things might have gone, realised due to a disappointment in the writing of the season to date. The story primarily covers Dean and Sam's separate views of the same events. Dean's year in Purgatory as I've imagined it, can be found in Through the Never._

* * *

**Chapter 1 Exit, Stage Right**

_**Sucrocorp, May 2012**_

Sam straightened up slowly, looking around at the strings and splashes and patches of black over the walls and floor and ceiling of the bright white lab. Behind him, Kevin opened his eyes, and clutched at his arm.

"Sam, we should go," he said, nervousness threading his voice.

Sam heard him, a part of his brain agreeing wholeheartedly with the teenager's suggestion, another part still reeling. "What the hell?"

"More chompers any second, Sam," Kevin pressed, his voice getting higher, turning to the door behind them as the King of Hell materialised in front of them.

Crowley smiled. "Not to worry. I have a small army of demons outside. Cut off the head, and the body will flounder, after all. Think if you'd had just one king since before the first sunrise. You'd be in a kerfuffle, too."

Sam looked at him, feeling his heart sink at the appearance of the demon. Crowley had planned this. Down to the last detail. "Which is exactly what you wanted."

"So did you," Crowley countered mildly. "Without a master plan, the Levis are just another monster. Hard to stomp, sure, but you love a challenge. Your job is to keep them from organizing." He gestured vaguely around the room as Sam watched him narrowly.

"Where's Dean?"

"That bone... has a bit of a kick," Crowley winced apologetically. "God weapons often do. They should put a warning on the box."

"Where are they, Crowley?" Sam grated, not in the mood for the demon's round-about prevarications.

"Can't help you, Sam." He straightened slightly and looked past Sam to Kevin, snapping his fingers together. Two demons appeared to either side of Kevin, hands curling around the young man's arms.

"Sorry, Sam. Prophet's mine," Crowley said quietly to Sam. He snapped his fingers again and the demons, and Kevin, disappeared.

"You got what you wanted – Dick's dead, saved the world. So I want one little prophet," he explained, shrugging. "Sorry, moose. Wish I could help. You certainly got a lot on your plate right now. It looks like you are well and truly ... on your own."

The faint echo of the clicked fingers lingered. Sam stared at the wall where Crowley had been. The sonofabitch was right. He was well and truly on his own now.

_You don't understand. Dick's got creamer in his lab. He's gonna kill all the skinny people._

_Without a master plan, the Levis are just another monster. Hard to stomp, sure, but you love a challenge. Your job is to keep them from organizing._

_We have to blow up the lab, Sam. Please._

The fragments of conversations looped through his mind. _Blow up the lab. Yeah_.

He blinked and shook himself slightly, pushing away the thoughts of his brother, of Kevin and Crowley, and the demons and leviathans outside of the building. Ammonia, iodine, glycerine, nitric acid, sulphuric acid, acetone, hydrogen peroxide … the possible ingredients ran through his mind and his gaze scanned the lab, looking for any or all of them.

He needed pipe and wire as well, he thought, as he found and gathered the liquid chemicals one by one. And he'd have to figure a way to destroy the data … all of it. The levis might well have other centres, they could be dealt with later, if and when he got his brother back, but he thought that Roman would have consolidated the major parts of his research and planning here, where the additives were designed and created. He pushed away the thought of the food already out there, on the shelves of stores and supermarkets, gas stations and in the vending machines. There was nothing he could do about those, now or in the future. Maybe the effects would wear off when no new additives were being produced. Maybe not.

He had the schematics of the building in his mind, and he started to build his bombs, mixing the liquids and crystals and powders, pouring them into the pipes, sealing them. The work was surprisingly soothing, giving him something to do other than think about things he really didn't want to think about.

The half dozen computers in the lab provided sufficient wire for his needs, and as soon as these were finished, he'd go to the servers. He didn't want to leave any recoverable trace of the data that Roman had developed. That would mean wiping the drives. There was only one thing he could think of that could do that, all at once and once and for all.

An hour later, Sam pulled the building's fire alarm and picked the wires that daisy-chained the chemical bombs, placed strategically through the laboratories, plugging them into the socket beside him. He turned and ran as the current detonated the first bomb across the hall from him, feeling the push of warm, expanding air behind him, and hearing the roar of the fire as it quickly set off more small explosions from the chemicals the lab contained.

He raced down the corridor and hit the fire stairs, heading up, taking the stairs three and four at a time, a long metal cylinder tucked under one arm. It was a simple device, with a small range, really. No more than a quarter mile in diameter he hoped, as he came to the floor he needed and hit the door. The entire floor was dedicated to data storage, quiet and cool, the humming of the machines audible over the distant explosions that continued beneath him.

He found a long length of wire in the supply room and ran it out to the centre of the room, stripping and twisting the ends around the shorter piece he'd inserted into the pipe as the detonating fuse. Standing up, he looked around the room, nodding half to himself. It would do, he thought. He followed the wire back to its end and stripped the ends, separating the live and neutral wires. He fed the ends into the socket and turned it on.

The device in the middle of the room blew up with a loud bang and a short burst of flame. It barely scorched the carpet. But the pulse it delivered at the moment of the explosion took out the power and every electronic or electrical appliance, machine and device in the area. He pulled his cell from his pocket and looked at it. It was dead.

That ought to keep them from organising for a while anyway, he thought, turning and going to the fire stairs again. The fire alarm had stopped as well, the digital controls wiped clean by the electro-magnetic pulse that had been generated by his little bomb.

None of the emergency lighting was operative and he walked down the stairs cautiously in the blackness, moving a bit faster as he passed the laboratory floors where he could still hear the roar of the fire, and came out into the darkened lobby. The buildings' employees were milling around, uncertain of what had happened. In the distance, he could hear fire engines approaching. It was definitely time to get out of Dodge.

Sam was relieved that the field hadn't been quite as big as he'd expected, and hadn't extended as far as the car park. The Impala still sat between the pillars of Sucrocorp's corporate sign, surrounded by black glass but otherwise undamaged, and the engine started as soon as he turned the key. There was no sign of Meg and he had a feeling that Crowley might have made good on his threat to her as soon as Cas had disappeared.

Another thing to be filed away and dealt with later, he thought tiredly, reversing the car out of the sign and turning around in the lot. List was getting long.

He needed information on Purgatory. The only problem was everyone that he knew of who'd known about it was either dead or incommunicado. His eyes watched the road, as he wracked his brain for any other possible way to find out. Books, references, lore and legend, there had to be something, something he and Dean and Bobby had missed out here in the world. But would Crowley have missed it? He wondered. Crowley had been the driving force behind the opening of the locked plane. He'd tortured the Alphas to get the secrets of its opening.

The Alpha Vampire? Sam was sure that he knew, he was ancient and he'd implied more than once he'd been among the first of Eve's creatures, her special creations. Maybe as a last resort, he thought uneasily. The vampire had helped with ridding the earth of the leviathans, only because of the threat they'd posed to his own children. He didn't think that the Alpha would make an altruistic contribution just save his brother and an angel.

Every myth and legend, all the lore they'd ever learned had a basis in some fact or another, he thought. What he really needed was someone who'd studied the mythology around the other planes of reality. Someone who'd studied Heaven, and Hell and Purgatory academically, who'd done the research and may have found the answers he needed without even realising it. There were a lot of academics out there who had delved into those legends, he knew.

He blinked and started looking around. He needed a place to stop, to plug in the laptop and start searching.

He saw the motel a few minutes later and checked the traffic, turning left into the driveway and pulling up in front of the office. The room was a single, the solitary bed reminding him anew of the time limit on him, his imagination throwing up a picture of what his brother might be facing even as he pulled the laptop from his bag and settled down at the table.

He ran five separate searches, each with slightly different criteria, looking for the expert he needed. Each search had returned the same four names, the consensus of the top four people in the field of anthropological mythology, the study of myth and legend from multiple fields including sociological, historical, anthropological, psychological. Each of the four specialised in a different area. He pulled up the information he could find on each, discarding two immediately when he realised that one professor's studies were more related to comparative study, and the other lived in London. The third was a professor in Harvard, Boston, and Roman's headquarters was on the way. He listed the details of the fourth name, a female professor in UCLA. She was a lot closer, he thought, but he needed to get rid of as much of the leviathan infrastructure as he could as fast as he could. He'd head to Chicago, deal with that and then go onto to Boston.

He chewed on the end of the pen as he thought about what he'd need to take out Roman's building. Another EMP would do the job but getting in was going to be a bitch. He'd need at least two days to check out the place, see if he could manage to find some way.

It would be a week before he even got to Boston, he thought, resting his head on his hand. A week for Dean and Cas in Purgatory. Would they even be alive? Were they still alive now?

_It's like the backside of your worst nightmares. It's all blood and bone and darkness. Filled with the bodies and souls of all things hungry, sharp, and nasty._

Bobby's words ran through his mind. How the hell were they going to survive in there?

* * *

_**Chicago, Illinois. May 2012**_

It had taken two days to drive to Illinois. He understood now why his brother listened to the hard rock that was the only music in the car. Five hours into the trip, his thoughts had been torturous, ripping him apart as he drove, too much time to think, the miles ticking over too slowly. He'd tried the radio but it wasn't consistent enough and the music he usually preferred was too quiet, too introspective to provide a decent distraction. In desperation he'd put one of Dean's tapes into the deck and turned up the volume. The steady insistent beat, the defiant lyrics and the soaring riffs of the guitars had blocked out his thoughts and feelings with remarkable efficiency, and for the rest of the drive he'd played tape after tape, sometimes feeling his brother's presence in the music so strongly that it had given him a sense of release.

He'd sat in the courtyard of the building opposite Roman Enterprises corporate headquarters, watching the building for a day and a half now. He knew the security measures that the Leviathan boss had put into place. What he needed to know was who could get in and out without needing the passes, which would take him too long to acquire, even if it were possible. He'd narrowed the possible options down to two. The company used an outside cleaning crew. And there was a second outside contract to a landscape gardening firm, who took care of the garden beds and trees planted around the outside of the building, and all the potted plants on the inside. The gardening team had access to the building through the day. The cleaning crews came in after ten at night, working until about two a.m.

Either would suit what he needed to do. There was no danger to any of the employees with an electro-magnetic pulse, it would take out the power and the phones and wipe the data clean, but it wouldn't harm a single person. The question was, which group would it be easier to infiltrate?

He'd noticed that the gardeners were the same group of people every day. The cleaning crews, on the other hand, seemed to be rotating; a different team had done the building the previous night. Their uniforms were standard white coveralls, easy to acquire. He folded up the newspaper he'd bought and nodded to himself.

At ten p.m. sharp he emerged from the shadows of the building's corner and joined the cleaning crew walking toward the building. A couple glanced at him, curiously.

Sam smiled and nodded to them. "Just started tonight. I'm Sam."

"Pete." The man nodded, then gestured to the woman walking beside him. "This is Maria."

"Hi Maria." Sam looked up at the building ahead of them. "Lot of floors."

She smiled and shrugged. "We only vacuum and empty the trash cans. No dusting, no wiping down. They're cheapskates here."

"Can I do that for you?" He looked at the cart she was pushing ahead of her. He'd had to modify the design of his bomb, making two shorter and thicker canisters instead of the single long one.

"Sure, thanks." He took over as they approached the front doors. "They tell you about the hourly rate?"

He shook his head, keeping his gaze fixed on her face as they walked past the security guards.

"They'll screw you if you don't keep on top of them," Maria said. "After hours we get a higher rate."

"Okay, thanks." Sam nodded, and let out the breath he'd been holding. They were through, waiting for the elevators.

"Yeah, and make sure you put the full flat time on your timesheet. They try and make out you took a break otherwise." Pete added from behind him.

"Thanks. Where do we start?"

"Top floor, then work down." Maria looked up at him. "They really didn't tell you anything, did they?"

He gave her a rueful smile and shook his head. From the schematics of the building Charlie had gotten for them a couple of months ago, he remembered there'd been a general network, and Roman's personal server network, on the executive floor. He didn't think the general network was much of a threat, and the pulse would probably take out the whole building anyway. He needed the eleventh floor.

"Sam, you better come with me tonight, Pete knows what he's doing." Maria followed him into the elevator and hit the eleventh floor button.

"Sure, thanks. That would be great." He looked at the lit button and let out a sigh of relief. Maybe this would go right.

They started on the executive floor and Sam moved around quietly, tracking Maria unconsciously through the low-pitched hum of the vacuum cleaner as he emptied trash cans and wiped down desk tops, working his way closer to Roman's office. At eleven thirty he followed Maria back into the elevator, nodding at the security guard as the doors closed.

They met Pete and his partner on seven just past one a.m. The building had been cleaned. One of his devices was hidden in a kitchen cupboard on the executive floor. The other had been slipped in between two racks of servers on the network clean room on the ninth floor. The remotes were in his pocket.

Walking outside, Sam dragged in a deep breath. Perhaps he could go into industrial espionage after this, he thought with a reluctant smile.

"You wanna get a drink, Sam?" Maria looked up at him quizzically.

"I've got another job starting in the morning," he said apologetically. "Take a rain check?"

"Sure." She smiled and waved, turning away to follow Pete and the rest of the crew. Sam looked back at the building as his fingers found the remotes. He pressed the button for the first one, then the second and watched the lights go out.

_And that concludes tonight's programming_, he thought. _Don't bother tuning into tomorrow_. The next bit was going to be much harder.

Then he turned away and started walking the four blocks to the car.

* * *

_**UCLA, Los Angeles, California. June 2012.**_

"I wish I could be of more help." She looked over the top of the file at him and he nodded.

Dr Lauren Metcalfe, professor of Anthropological Studies the name plate on her desk said in front of him. PhD in Anthropology, in Theology and a Master's degree in mythological studies. She'd known about Purgatory alright. Just … not enough.

"Uh, could I have a copy of everything you found?" he asked, looking around the ordered chaos of her office.

"Yeah, of course," she said, gathering up the files on the desk. "Look, there are a number of disparate myths about being able to enter the realm of Purgatory. I've checked them, but none of them have any basis in fact."

"Myths are fine," he said, leaning forward.

She smiled. "You fiction writers have it easy."

"Not so much," he said dryly.

"The thing with the mythology of the place is that it falls into two separate areas – there's the religious mythology which was created by the church, sometime in the fourth or fifth centuries. Then there's a contradictory and much less detailed mythological theory that's much older."

"Probably the older mythology is more interesting for what I'm trying to do."

"Yes, I can see that how that might work better for fiction." Lauren handed him a small stack of files. "Virgin sacrifice was always one of the more popular ways to get into a forbidden kingdom. And some cultures insist that if you kill a monster and are very close to it you could be taken into the underworld along with the soul of the monster."

_Now that sounded promising_, Sam thought, watching her.

"Of course, there's a long-standing myth that humans can enter and leave Purgatory as well, but only if they're alive, I mean flesh and blood," she continued, picking up a book and handing it to him. "Some of the very old texts suggested that there was a spell for creating a doorway into the various parts of the underworld, even to open a gate into Hell itself."

He felt himself freeze and looked at her, uncomfortably aware that she was looking at him with a slight smile.

"Really?"

"I've included a copy in the file, along with the translation," she said, gesturing to it. "Not sure where you'd find the ingredients though."

Lauren glanced at her watch. "I'm sorry, I have to go. I hope that helps."

"Thanks, thank you," Sam said, getting to his feet and extending his hand. "It's a huge help, for the, uh, story."

"Let me know if I can help with anything else."

Sam nodded and turned for the door, tucking the files under his arm, feeling more hopeful. He strode down the hallways and almost ran down the stairs, heart pounding as he wondered about getting whatever was needed. Killing a monster wasn't quite so cut and dried that he could just go out and do it. But the spell, that would be different. He thought of who was left, who might have the knowledge to help him obtain the ingredients he'd need. The realisation that there weren't many on that list sobered him as he crossed the campus for the parking lot.

* * *

_**Pocatello, Idaho. July, 2012**_

The motel room was dim, the curtains drawn tightly against the desert sunshine. Sam sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, wondering what the hell he was going to try next.

He'd actually managed to find a werewolf three weeks ago, getting so close to the thing when he'd pushed the silver knife into its chest that it had taken two days to rid himself of the rank, canine smell in his hair and on his clothes. It hadn't helped. The creature had died in his arms and he'd remained stubbornly stuck on this plane. Dr Metcalfe hadn't been kidding about the spell's ingredients either. No one he'd called had ever heard of half of them. And some had been impossible to begin with. A demon's tooth. Demons inhabited human vessels. They were spirits, corrupted souls, they had no teeth. How was he supposed to find something that didn't exist? He'd looked at the spell every which way, as a riddle, as a metaphor, as an analogy and it had all come down to the same thing. It was impossible.

He rubbed both hands over his face and fell backwards onto the bed. Two and a half months had gone while he'd been fucking around trying to find a way to make the goddamned spell work and dealing with the last of the levis. Kevin was gone. Dean … his brother could be dead.

Sam closed his eyes. Dean and Cas probably were dead. Sucked into a world of monsters. Dean was the best hunter he'd ever seen but no one could take on a world of monsters and expect luck to last.

The tightness in his chest and throat forced him onto his side. What was he supposed to do now?

* * *

_**Whitefish, Montana. July 2012.**_

The cabin was musty and he opened the windows and left the door standing open, the warm breeze pushing through the rooms and taking the closed-cabin smells with it.

Bobby's library was still packed in boxes, stacked around the walls of the room. Dean's pinboard still held the pieces of the puzzle he'd been working on after Bobby's death. No matter where he looked he could see the old man, or his brother, or both … filling the cabin with their ghosts, filling his heart with an emptiness that was getting harder and harder to bear.

Kevin had vanished completely. He'd attempted to summon Crowley four times, each time failing. The King of Hell had figured out a way to get around the summoning, which wasn't exactly a surprise but had reduced his options even further.

He'd killed a vampire outside of Boise, a fledling on its own. He'd been within kissing distance of the monster when it had died, it's head taken off with razor wire. Still nothing. No magical entry to the land of the monsters. Nothing at all but a headless body in his hands.

He knew the feeling of despair. Knew it as intimately as a lover's touch. Knew the amnesia that could be sometimes found in a bottle. Knew the rage that lurked against the edges of his soul and could rise at any time. Knew that feeling of utter futility when every path had been explored, every dead-end checked and rechecked, every hope squashed and crumbling at his feet.

There was no hope here, he thought, looking around the cabin. He looked at the black car, gleaming in the sunshine outside. Driving it had at least given him some illusion of being close to Dean. Of being alive.

Sam packed his clothes into the green canvas duffle and threw his weapons on top, zipping the bag up. He looked at the half-dozen cell phones that lay on the bed beside the bag. Not one of them had brought a lead. He picked up the first and turned it off, tossing it into the small cardboard box. Then the second and third. When all the phones were in the box, he lifted it and set it on the desk, turning away from his ties to the past.

The duffle wasn't heavy, not as heavy as his heart, he thought. He walked out through the door and closed it behind him, locking it, and shoving the keys deep into his pocket.

That was the old way. That was when he had a family and friends and something to live for. He looked at the Impala. This would be all new, unexplored territory. He had no idea of where he thought he was going. Or what he would do if he ever got there. He just knew he couldn't keep sitting in the cabin, looking for answers that didn't exist, feeling the pull to the amnesia of alcohol more and more strongly each day. He'd done that and it had been the wrong decision then. This time he would do something else.


	2. Chapter 2 What Dreams May Come

**Chapter 2 What Dreams May Come**

* * *

_**Casper, Wyoming. August 2012.**_

Sam sat at the bar, pushing the lettuce around his plate. The small bar was nearly full, the jukebox volume somewhere around eight, bass pounding and riffs shrieking but still not quite able to overcome the rumble of conversation that filled the place.

He felt invisible, sitting there, alone in the centre of all the people. The bartender had smiled at him when he'd sat down, but her eyes drifted past and over him every time she moved from one side of the bar to the other. People jostled him from behind, edging or squeezing or just barrelling past, not acknowledging that he was sitting there. Might as well have been an ill-placed piece of furniture.

It was a strange feeling. It had been growing in him for the last two weeks, as he'd driven aimlessly south down the country. The attendants in the gas stations had barely looked at him. In convenience stores when he picked up another sack of road food, and another six pack of beer, their gazes went straight through him.

He looked down at his hands. Still solid, so far as he could tell. Still there. He'd spent ten minutes looking at his reflection in the mirror at the last motel, unable to see anything different about himself.

It might've been that he didn't feel present, he thought vaguely. Didn't feel like he belonged anywhere in this life, on this planet, among these people. There were shadows deepening under his eyes. Hollows deepening in his face. The nightmares had started a few weeks ago, when he'd run out of ideas, and they were vicious, giving him a couple of hours sleep a night but that was all. Even Lucifer's raucous presence in his mind hadn't been like the dreams. He would wake, his hands clutching the air, his throat raw from screaming and the linen soaked in his sweat, minutes passing before he could recognise the cheap motel room or the back seat of the car, minutes in which the last few terrifying images would play and replay over and over again.

_Hell hadn't been this bad_, he thought sourly, pushing the plate away from him and picking up the bottle of beer.

Dean was gone. He made himself think the words, feel them. He was alone. No one would ever watch his back again. No one would wake him in the middle of the night, rasping breath and shuddering moans and the distinctive scritch of a flask lid being undone. No one would give him a hard time for liking poetry and art, indy music or not knowing how to clean a carburettor. No one would make him laugh with a bad joke at a crime scene, or make his heart ache watching emotions pass like shadows in deep green eyes.

He dragged in a breath and finished his beer.

* * *

_**Centennial, Colorado. August 2012.**_

_The darkness was complete and he could only hear, not see. Around him, the furtive rustlings seemed loud, getting closer. The ululation made him start, fingers tightening into fists._

_He saw Dean step forward, looking wide-eyed around him. How can I see him when I can't see my hands in front of my face? The question was gone in a flash as the creatures attacked, three of them, coming from all sides and surrounding his brother._

_NO! The scream was locked inside of his head, his feet locked to the ground, arms outstretched hopelessly as he watched the whip-fast strike, Dean's side opened under the long, curving claws, his brother's grunt as he swung the makeshift weapon at the werewolf, and the arch of his back as the second creature raked its claws down into his flesh, blood flowing from each of the rips, spine gleaming white amidst the red. In seconds, the three dropped to feed on the still-living body, and the scream rose in the black, filled with agony, until one blood-soaked muzzle plunged into his chest._

_Christ_. Sam fought his way free of the tangled bedding that held his feet and legs trapped, shaking helplessly as the images played out in front of him even with his eyes open. He got up unsteadily and walked to the bathroom, turning on the shower taps and stepping under the spray of water until the sweat and tears had been washed from him, his t-shirt clinging to his skin, leaning against the smooth tiled wall as the vision faded and flickered and finally disappeared.

He was starting to shiver, the hot water having run out long ago, when he turned off the taps and got out. He stripped the wet clothes off, wringing them out over the sink and throwing them over the shower curtain rail. He rubbed himself down hard, trying to bring some warmth back to his skin, trying to desensitise the sense memories of claws ripping through flesh, of blood trickling and flowing and pouring down from wounds that couldn't possibly be survived.

The room was full of shadows and he hurried to the nightstand, turning on the lamp, looking around uneasily as the shadows were dispersed by the soft, golden light. The bed linen was soaked through, the sour smell of fear-filled sweat making him turn away.

Beside the lamp, a small, white, plastic bottle waited for him. The Zopiclone had been prescribed but he'd only taken one so far. The drug's effects including the disruption of dreaming sleep which was the only reason to take it. It screwed up his motor responses badly and he could feel his reactions slowing if he drove the next day. He looked at the bottle for a long moment, then turned away, pulling on a clean shirt and boxers, and getting the spare blanket from the closet. The couch wasn't quite long enough, but it would have to do.

In the duffle at the end of the bed, there was a bottle. It didn't do any better than the drugs. If anything, it stripped him of all of his defences when he finally passed out, giving his subconscious free range, his memories filled with horrors that translated into the dreams of what his brother faced down in the land of monsters.

This time he didn't even have a body to bury. It didn't change anything. Dean wasn't dead. Or he was. He didn't know. He couldn't find out. He couldn't let go. He couldn't move on.

He'd been through Dr Metcalfe's file on the mythology of Purgatory a thousand times. There was a lot of confirmation of what they'd discovered earlier, when they'd been trying to prevent the opening of the realm. He still had the spell to open the door. But there wasn't another full eclipse until November 2012. And Death hadn't responded to his summoning spell either.

He sat up on the couch and rubbed his eyes. There was one more thing he could try. Dean would kill him if he ever found out. And it would be a complete waste if his brother was already dead.

_It was a deal. When's a deal ever been a good thing?_

He'd said it to Dean. He believed it too. Making deals had always brought them the worst pain and suffering. Had brought it to their family, to their friends, to the innocent bystanders who'd been around at the time. Deals for the Winchesters had brought a demon into their lives and even after the bastard had been killed, the repercussions had gone on and on.

But it was an option.

* * *

_**One week later. Clovis, New Mexico. August, 2012.**_

The crossroad was empty, a meeting of two dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. The moon rode high above him as he stood there, the small cigar box clenched tightly in his hand, painting the landscape in shades of silver and grey and black.

_When crap like this comes around, we deal with it ... like we always have. What we don't do is we don't go out and make another deal with the devil!_

He stood in the centre, the exact centre where the two roads met. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

_What am I supposed to do, Dean? This could get you out_. The thought bit into him and he knelt on the ground, one hand brushing aside the gravel.

"You really think anyone's going to make a deal with you, Sam?"

Crowley's voice was behind him and he spun around, dropping the box.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"In Hell, mostly," Crowley said, one brow lifted. "What do you think you're doing, Sam?"

"He's in Purgatory."

"I know." The demon walked slowly around him. "Dick shot back there as soon as the bone had finished its work."

"I have to get him out." Sam stared at Crowley, lips thinning as he saw the demon smile.

"No. You don't," Crowley shook his head. "You go on and live your life. Dean's stuck down there for good. There's no getting him out."

"There's my soul," Sam said, looking down at the box on the ground.

"But I don't want it."

"Why?"

"Because you're so much more entertaining running around up here, Moose." He stopped and looked at him. "You're completely impotent without him, aren't you? No hunting, no fighting. Good job on the leviathan destructuring, by the way."

"Where's Kevin?"

"Kevin's safe and sound and will remain so until he's finished the little job I have for him," Crowley said, smiling slightly. "Don't worry, once I'm done, I'll give you a bell first."

"How do I get Dean out?"

"English suddenly a second language?" Crowley rolled his eyes. "You can't. Ever. He's down there for good. No one will deal with you. Surely you can comprehend that."

Sam felt the words as hammer blows against him, as nails pounded into a coffin. A coffin containing his brother. Containing his hope. He closed his eyes, letting his head fall back.

When he opened them, Crowley was gone. At his feet, the small box sat on the ground. He picked it up and walked back to the car.

* * *

_**CR 115, Kermit, Texas, September 2012.**_

Sam stared through the windshield, feeling the slightly cotton-wool hangover of the Zopiclone persisting in his mind. The road was empty, and the Impala's headlights lit up the lines wanly against the black tarmac, daylight not quite faded yet, night still to come, the edges shifting a little from side to side as he narrowed his eyes and tried to concentrate. Last night's had been the worst one yet, a visceral blood-bath that had forced him out of the bed and into the bathroom, jettisoning his meal and the two beers into the toilet bowl, his head pounding, his heart racing. He'd taken the pills and had slept on the floor.

The flat plains stretched out to either side of the road, and he over-corrected as the car drifted onto the other side absently. The flash of white in the headlights made him jump then the tyres hit and he heard the yelp and the thump simultaneously, slamming his foot onto the brake, the car's steering pulling against his grip as the rear tyre lifted and fell.

_Fuck!_ He looked up and back down the road, and got out, hurrying around the trunk. In the red glare of the taillights, the dog lay panting softly on the tar, moving a paw restlessly. Sam saw the blood and felt his chest constrict tightly.

"It's okay, boy, it's okay," he murmured, crouching down beside the dog, his hand smoothing over the fur of the animal's head. "I'll get you fixed up, you'll be fine, you'll be good."

He stood up and opened the back door, pulling out a towel from his bag and returning to the rear of the car, spreading the towel over the dog and carefully lifting him to tuck it underneath.

_No dogs in the car, Sammy._

Dean's voice whispered in his mind and was gone as he lifted the animal gently and laid him along the back seat.

Kermit was just ahead. He hoped there was a vet in town. He looked at the bloody froth spilling from the dog's mouth and swallowed hard, shutting the door and diving into the driver's seat. The Impala fishtailed wildly for a moment as he stamped on the accelerator. _Not another thing. Not another thing dead. Not for him. No more dying._

River Bluff Veterinary Hospital was just off Main Street, and the lights were on, the door open. Sam pushed the glass door aside with his elbow, staring at the young, dark-haired woman behind the counter fixedly.

"Help. I need help. The dog needs help." The words came out fast, falling over each other.

She looked at him and pointed to the hallway beyond. "That way!"

Sam ran down the hall, slowing as the woman passed him and opened a door into a surgery.

"He just – he just came out of nowhere, right in front of my car," he muttered, laying the dog carefully on the stainless steel table. "We need a doctor. Are you a doctor?"

She looked up at him, then back at the dog. "The doctor's coming, sir. But I'm not sure –"

"You're not sure what?" Sam looked at her, leaning on the table, his voice rising as he took in her expression. _Not going to die. Not now. Not here. Not with him_. "This is an animal hospital. You save animals!"

She looked at him, and he could see that he was starting to scare her. _Not going to die. No. Enough_.

"Sir."

"Save this animal!" he yelled in her face, unable to shut out his thoughts. _Dean. Bobby. Cas. No fucking more. Jess. Maddy. Mom. He'd had enough._

"Roberta, can you escort this gentleman out, please?" The voice was cool and calm, cutting sharply over his and Sam swung around, staring at the woman in the white coat who'd entered behind him. Dark curls drawn back from a heart-shaped face and held smoothly down. Dark, straight brows over brown eyes. A dimpled chin, raised slightly as she looked up at him.

He felt the throb of his anger diminishing as he looked at her, that smooth, calm face challenging him to get himself under control, to not give in to the desire to scream.

"Yes," Roberta said, relief evident in her tone. She walked around the table as the vet came in.

Sam looked at the vet. "I did this."

He watched her walk past him, as he backed out of the room. He didn't know why he'd said that. Taking responsibility? Or trying to tell her to undo this mistake, to make it all better?

"Come on," Roberta said from the hallway.

Roberta stood behind the counter, her gaze resolutely fixed on the files and papers in front of her. Sam recognised the shut out and looked down at his hands, clenched together on his lap. The soles of his boots were tapping lightly on the linoleum floor but he didn't notice the noise.

The vet came through the doorway and he looked up expectantly at her, a little surprised at how young she looked. He got to his feet as she stopped.

"He's sustained some serious internal bleeding. There's at least two leg fractures that I can see right now. But with some TLC, he should pull through for you," she said, her voice warm now, a hint of a smile on her face.

He let out the breath he'd been holding, eyes closing in relief. "Thanks, Doctor."

He turned away._ Not dead. Saved._

"You're gonna take the dog?"she asked, seeing the movement toward the door.

Sam looked back at her, brow wrinkling. "I-I would. He's... not mine."

"He's not anybody's," she agreed, glancing away, her mouth slightly curved as if she already knew the excuses she would be hearing next. Sam tried to think of something foolproof.

"Well, I-I spend a lot of the time on the road," he said, not liking the way the conversation was heading, unable to prevent the lack of certainty in his voice.

The smile had vanished from her face as she took a step toward him, head tilted slightly. "Don't you think you're responsible?"

"Why do you think I brought him here?" Sam lifted a shoulder slightly. Of course he was responsible; he'd nearly killed the damned dog.

She turned to the nurse behind the counter. "Roberta, could you hand this man his trophy on his way out, please?"

Sam looked at the nurse, seeing her smirk as she nodded. He looked back to the vet. What had he done to deserve the tag-team treatment, he wondered.

"Well, maybe if you were such an upstanding guy, you wouldn't have hit him in the first place?" she said quietly, her eyes cool.

He was boxed in between the two of them. Another asshole. He could practically see the thought above their heads. He didn't want to be that guy. He wasn't capable of looking after anything, he wanted to tell her. Not his family. Not himself.

"Fine. I'll take him."

She looked at him and he knew she could see his reluctance, could see his doubts. "There's my hero."

_What the hell had that been?_ He'd felt her pushing at him, pushing hard to make him do what she'd wanted. He didn't know why she'd done it. He didn't know why he hadn't said something back. He didn't know why he was still standing there.

* * *

_**October, 2011.**_

Sam walked into the office, the dog hobbling just in front of him on the leash. He looked at the counter and raised his brows at the young man sitting behind it.

"Everett." He let the door go and it closed behind him. "Hey, buddy, you still on duty?"

Everett got up, leaning on the counter a little more heavily than usual, his eyes rolling slightly. "Yeah, yeah."

Sam looked at him, brow creasing as he saw the tiredness. "How's your dad?"

Everett glanced toward the door that led into their living quarters involuntarily. "He's kind of having it rough on the new regimen," he said, his gaze going past Sam as a memory hit him. "Can't keep anything down."

"That sucks."

The young man looked down at the counter, and Sam realised that it had been an understatement. It sucked for the whole family, not to put too fine a point on it. Everett looked like he could use a change of subject. Maybe even a change of life.

"Listen, um, I'm gonna stay on another week, okay? But I need you to run it on this card, 'cause I just cancelled the one you had on file." He dug the credit card out of his wallet and handed it over.

"Okay, sure," he said, taking the new card and getting out the machine. The air conditioner embedded in the window beside the door suddenly gave a long rattle and Sam glanced over at it.

"Figured you'd have moved on by now," Everett said, running the card through.

"Right. Well, I'm – I'm kind of between jobs," Sam said quickly. The air conditioner rattled again, like a pack of playing cards against the spokes of a bicycle wheel and he looked back at it, frowning. Everett glanced at it, entirely resigned to the noises and gurgles and thumps of the appliance. Sam looked at the dog. "Uh ... plus, uh, dog has a surgery follow-up on Tuesday."

"Yeah, you really messed up that dog," Everett said, his gaze following Sam's to the dog, who stood patiently beside the counter, one bandaged paw raised. He looked back to Sam. Sam's answering smile looked more like a wince.

"Right. Uh, thanks for that."

The air conditioner rattled and buzzed more loudly, starting to shake. Sam looked at it and slapped his palm against the grill, inciting a louder rattle.

"Oh, yeah, it's all that thing does – piss, moan, and eat up money we ain't got," Everett said, looking down at it. Sam turned to look at him.

"Well, you got any tools?"

"Hell," Everett said, brows rising. "If you can fix it, you don't need to go and look for a job." He turned away from the counter, reaching for a toolbox that sat on the floor beside the cupboard. "You got one here."

Sam stared at him. A job. _There was a novel idea_. Working for a living.

* * *

_**Four days later.**_

Sam put the toolbox outside the office door and came in, wiping his hands on the cloth rag he kept in the coverall pocket.

"Everett?"

He looked around, leaning over the counter to look through the glass panelled door to the left.

"Everett? I'm done with twenty six."

"Hey, Sam, sorry," Everett came in through the office door behind him, carrying two bags of ice. "I'll be back out in a minute."

"Sure," Sam said, nodding. "No rush."

The ice was for Everett's father. Sucking on it kept his stomach from heaving every five minutes. He could hear Everett's voice, talking to him as he broke up enough ice in the bag to fill a cup, his father's responses a low rumble behind the door.

He turned away, looking at the silently running air conditioner in the window, feeling the cool stream of air blowing against his legs. Should have been installed higher, he thought vaguely, cold air falls. But it was a big improvement on the noisy, tepid air the unit had been pushing out.

"Sorry." Everett came back out.

"No problem. I finished twenty six – you got anything else today?" Sam looked at him. He looked less tired, he thought critically. But no less worried.

"Ice machine," Everett gestured to the offending appliance against the far wall.

* * *

The dog lay panting on the floor next to him as he finished reconnecting the frayed wire and flicked the switch. The machine began to hum quietly.

"Awesome!" Everett grinned at him. Sam smiled and lifted the panel down, setting it into place.

"Uh, if you're still on the clock, lady in one eighteen says the sink's backed up," Everett continued, leaning on the counter and gesturing vaguely outside.

"Sure," Sam said, setting the screws in place on the panel and screwing it back in. He put the tools in the box and picked it up, heading for the door.

"Hey, Sam," Everett said from behind him. Sam stopped, looking back over his shoulder. "You, uh, feel like getting a beer after work?"

He looked down at the keys in his hand, and nodded slowly. "Yeah, sure. Sounds good. I'll drop these back when I'm done."

"Good." Everett sat down in the chair behind the desk.

Going out of the office, Sam rolled his shoulders lightly. The job was easy, most of the work just replacing worn pieces, a little oil, some brushing the years of accumulated dirt and dust and grime out. Maintenance work. Keeping things in good repair. It suited him. Suited the way he was feeling. He and … his brother … had been running for the last three years, longer than that. Since Dad had died, he realised slowly. Running from things. Running toward things. Just running in place most of the time and never even recognising it.

He was beginning to understand his brother's feelings for the car. Taking care of her. Fixing the little things before they became big things. Doing the maintenance work. He didn't understand how for the last seven years, they'd failed to do that maintenance work with each other. They genuinely got on, a lot of the time. Their shared history had stripped them both down to the core, to who they'd really been. And still they'd kept secrets. He'd kept secrets.

It was too late to make amends. Too late to admit that he'd been wrong, that he'd made choices that had screwed them – and the world – up so badly. Choices that he'd thought were right, but that he knew weren't. Wrapped up in his pride and his need to be … what? Stronger? Surer? He didn't know.

* * *

One eighteen was a long-term rental, and the place was … lived in, sort of. He glanced around. Tequila, wine, mixers in cans, limes and margarita glasses encrusted in salt. Lady in one eighteen was looking for some serious amnesia from her problems, he thought. Not that he was in any position to judge.

Once the pipe was off and he'd pulled the garbage disposal out, it was apparent what the problem was.

The door opened and he looked around, eyes widening as he saw the dog's vet walk in carrying two bags of groceries, her face undergoing a transformation from relaxed to outrage in seconds.

"What the hell?" She looked down at him, her voice getting louder as each word came out. "What are you doing here?"

_No. No, no, no, no. Crap, not this woman_. Sam's thoughts rocketed through his brain as he gripped the edge of the sink and stood up.

"I knew there was something off about you, with your creepy Army-Navy and your sideburns –" She looked him up and down as her thoughts came tumbling out of her mouth without any effort at courtesy or control.

Sam's face scrunched up. He didn't need this. Not today, not any day. _Creepy Army-Navy?_

"Stop! Stop." He looked at her. "Um, I'm fixing your sink."

It stopped her. "What?"

For a moment, they stood still, looking at each other. It was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, Sam thought. Like standing at a crossroads and wondering which direction to take. He couldn't make the decision. He didn't need to.

"So that's what you do?" She looked from the sink to him and walked slowly to the counter, lifting the groceries onto it. "You stalk helpless women and you break into their motel rooms and you … fix their plumbing?" She stood behind the counter.

Sam watched her, listening in disbelief. Lady in one eighteen had a few issues, he thought. And she obviously believed that offence was the best defence.

"Why are you fixing my sink?" Her face screwed up as she said it, as if she couldn't imagine a single reason for him to be there. Sam swallowed a bubble of laughter. _Frank could take lessons from this woman. Hell, Dean could take lessons_ … the thought doused his amusement instantly.

"Well, because somebody jammed about eight hundred limes down the drain," he said slowly, lifting the disposal out from under the sink and showing her the contents as he set it on the counter beside the bags. "And blew out the disposal."

"Oh. Right," she said. Sam saw the bag of limes sitting on top of the closest bag of groceries and lifted them. "Don't touch the produce."

"Right," he said, looking away as he let go of the bag.

"I thought you were leaving town?" she asked accusingly.

"I am. I'm just helping out with maintenance at the motel, you know, while Everett's dad is sick," he said, not sure why he felt the need to tell her anything at all.

"Who's Everett?"

Sam looked at her, brow lifting. "How long have you been here?"

"Three months. Why?"

He wiped his hands on the rag. "Because usually when someone moves into a town, they actually, uh …" He dropped the rag into the toolbox and spread his hands out. "You know, move into the town."

She nodded. "I did."

"A motel is not actually a part of the town that it's in," he said uncomfortably. "It's not part of anywhere." And he should know, he'd spent his entire childhood and most of his adult life in them. He wondered distractedly what she would say if he told her that.

She shrugged, looking away and then back to him. "Well, I haven't found a place yet."

In that moment, he saw it, in her eyes, in her face. She wasn't looking for a place. She didn't want a place. Not to call home. Not to tie her to anything. Not to have a connection of any sort, not even knowing the name of the guy she paid her rent to every single week.

"Why am I explaining myself to you?" she blurted out, hiding the sudden honesty behind a swiftly erected mask of disdain. "You're a drifter, or a handyman."

Sam turned away, his mouth curling up on one side at her attempts. One of life's casualties. One more of life's casualties. "I think I should just go."

"Yeah, I think you should go."

Sam picked up the toolbox and walked to the door. The keys were still hanging from the handle, and he pulled them out, tossing them onto the counter beside the sink, and pulling the door closed behind him.

He didn't have time to think about other people's mess and chaos, he thought, walking down the concreted path back to his own room. Didn't have time to feel pain for anyone but himself.

* * *

_**November, 2011.**_

The weather was holding, the days drifting on, sunny and cold. Sam closed the room door behind him and called to the dog who was sniffing conscientiously around the trees near the path.

"Come on, dog," he said, bending slightly and holding out the leash. The dog raised his head suddenly and barked, taking off down the path toward the other wing of rooms. Sam straightened, looking after him disbelievingly, walking fast behind him, faster as he saw the room the dog was heading for.

"No, no, _no_. Dog, dog, dog! Oh ... no, dog... don't bother the angry lady."

He walked slowly and reluctantly up to the open door, knocking as he peered inside. Angry Vet Lady was the mental nickname he'd given her, refined down from Lady in One Eighteen with Issues, which was too much of a mouthful even mentally. She was sitting on the sofa, legs stretched out and bare feet propped on the low table in front of her. The dog lay on the sofa, halfway across her lap, panting happily and looking in the other direction pointedly as he stepped inside the room.

"Uh … hey, sorry."

""Dog"? That's what you're calling him?" She looked up at him, mouth curving up.

It wasn't an expression he'd really seen on her before. "Uh ..."

"Well, it's accurate," she said, her fingers disappearing into the long fur at the back of the dog's neck as she looked down at the animal. Sam twisted the leash in his hands, wondering how to extract himself and the dog from the room without it turning into another insult-filled, tense and unnecessary confrontation.

"Is Dog taking his antibiotics?" She looked at him questioningly.

"Uh, yes, he is. He's doing much better. Thank you," he said awkwardly, unwilling to meet her eyes. It was ridiculous to be afraid of what she might say, he thought. _You've faced every kind of monster, demon and angel. You've been to Hell. Geez, get a grip_.

"You know, um," he said, peering through the open room divider, and walking around it. "I have to say – um ... I've seen a lot of stitches in my time, and you've got really good hands."

It wasn't what she'd expected him to say. And she took it at face value, he thought, watching the expressions flit over her face.

"Thank you."

_Don't ask_, he thought to himself as a thought popped into his head. _Don't._ It came out anyway. "So, you think I'm creepy?"

She smiled, tipping her head back as she qualified the statement carefully. "I think it's creepy you buy all your clothing at army surplus. White supremacists do that."

"Yeah … but I'm not," he said firmly.

"Drifting serial killers do that," she countered immediately. Sam laughed a little. Drifting serial killers – did that fit him? He killed. Serially. It was a valid comment.

"Fair enough," he said, looking down at the leash in his hand.

"You come from nowhere, you appear to be going nowhere, and you've, quote, "seen a lot of stitches,"" she cut him off, then dropped her eyes. "It's all pretty solid creepy."

Sam grinned, a shit-eating-gee-ya-caught-me grin. He couldn't remember seeing anyone with the defences this woman had. And the offence. She hit fast and hard and took no prisoners. He'd only seen one other person come close. The thought made him look at her more closely. He knew defences like that. He had some of them himself. Some he'd seen in others. They were the walls and barricades of someone who was still cracking from pain, so fragile that every day was a decision. To carry on, or to give up.

There was a chair opposite her, on the other side of the low table and he walked to it, glancing back at her, wondering if she'd let him sit. And ask. And talk. He saw the flash of wariness fill her face, disappearing almost as soon as it had appeared.

"You have no idea where you're going, either, do you?" he asked her quietly, the smile gone.

"No," she said, her eyes looking into his. She dropped her gaze to the dog, and he saw the pretence of strength fall away. "Not really."

It occurred to him that she could get really mad. It didn't matter. Not now. If she didn't want to talk, she didn't have to. He wasn't going to make her. But for the first time in months, he wanted to talk. To someone. To reach out and feel like what he had to say was of some importance to someone. He wasn't invisible. He wasn't floating on the wind, waiting for Death.

"And that's because you have no one," he said, not cramming it down her throat, but laying it on the table. Out in the open. "I mean, at all, right? I mean, that's why you're ... here. In this place?"

She looked at him, trying to brush off the sudden intimacy of his question with a laugh. No one had asked her anything personal. For a long time. It felt … frightening. But liberating as well. She couldn't look at him directly as she found the words to answer.

"I used to – have someone, I mean. But that's over now. It's gone," she said, swallowing hard against the memories that rose up like a flood.

He looked away, abruptly ashamed of asking, of asking her to show that to him.

"You know what that's like, don't you?"

He looked back at her. He did know.

For a long time, they sat there in a silence that seemed to be bottomless, just looking at each other, both weighing pro and con of telling the truth, telling someone how it was.

"My mother died when I was six months old. My father when I was twenty three. I lost my brother seven months ago."

The words dropped into the silence and he could almost feel the ripples as they crossed the room and bounced back at him, bounced off her and back at him.

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

He nodded, lifting a shoulder. "I didn't expect it. I-I kind of had it in my head that he couldn't die."

She tipped her head back against the wall, eyes half-closed as she looked at him with perfect understanding. "Yeah."

"I'm Sam Winchester."

"Amelia Richardson."

* * *

_**December, 2012.**_

"Christmas? Really?" Sam looked around the room. Candles and tinsel and over-sized baubles hung from the walls and the room divider and the light fittings, giving the impression of being inside a shop window display.

"Not really," Amelia said, pouring out a glass of eggnog and handing it to him. "No presents, no carols, no tree and no ambitious, overdone dinner. Just …" She looked around, shrugging. "Just us, and no one else."

He looked around again, this time seeing a private place, warm and inviting without being too Christmassy. Except for the red and gold and green tinsel.

"Okay," he said, following her to the sofa. "What brought this on?"

"I used to love Christmas," she said, sitting down. "And then …" She looked away for a moment, and he caught the sheen in her eyes, sipping his eggnog to give her the time to get her emotions back under control.

"Then it wasn't the same," she said, swallowing a mouthful of eggnog quickly. "I just want it to not be so awful again."

"I'll drink to that," he said quietly, clinking his glass lightly against hers. In the candlelight, she looked softer, almost gentle.

"Why did you long for a normal life, Sam?" She looked at him, turning her head and resting her cheek against the back of the sofa.

"I wanted to be free of the nightmare, I guess," he said, leaning back beside her. "I expected to lose my father and brother at any time. I got sick of that."

"Normal life isn't all that it's cracked up to be, you know."

"I know." He sighed. "But it beats what I've been doing."

He rolled onto one shoulder, looking at her. "I had a normal life with Jess, for a couple of years. And I was happy."

She closed her eyes, nodding. "Then I want you to have a normal life too. Life's too short to not be happy, at least some of the time."

He looked into her face, and put his glass on the table, taking hers from her hand and setting it down as well.

"I'd like to see you happy," he said softly, leaning closer.

She opened her eyes. Sam saw them widen a little, the pupils dilating a little. He felt her breath on his mouth, saw her eyelids flutter closed as his lips met hers. Heat uncoiled slowly inside of him, heat and a throbbing desire and a desperation that he hadn't felt for a long, long time, to be closer, to be himself.


	3. Chapter 3 One Year Later

**Chapter 3 One Year Later**

* * *

_**100-Mile Wilderness, Maine**_

Erica snapped awake as light poured through the thin canvas of the tent walls. She hated camping, hated the bugs and the hard ground bruising her hips and shoulders, hated the taste of the water, flat and tepid after boiling, hated the fear that accompanied her down into sleep and lurked around the edges of her dreams all through the night. She especially hated strange things happening outside the tent when she was lying inside, vulnerable and unprotected by four solid walls. She sat up and grabbed the shoulder of the man lying beside her, shaking it hard.

"Will, get up. Something just happened," she said, hating the way her heart was pounding in her chest.

Will struggled out of sleep as the light faded and the tent slipped into semi-darkness again, the small butane light in the corner creating more shadows than it dispelled. Behind the tent, they both heard the crackle of steps through the undergrowth, the snap of branches. From the corner of her eye, Erica saw the figure move fast past the tent. Then the noise stopped.

"Go," she hissed at him. "Go do something."

"W-what'm I supposed to –" He looked at her face and turned over, scrabbling in his pack for the flashlight he'd left there. He rolled onto his feet and walked out of the tent, the flashlight beam swinging wildly as he tried to see into the trees that surrounded them.

"Hello? Hello?" The forest was silent, and he realised that half-asleep and under Erica's immediate hysterical response, he'd been fooled. "It was a deer." The explanation made perfect sense.

He started to relax as he turned back to the tent. "I don't know. It was like – it was a deer or something –" Something crackled behind him and he swung around, the flashlight beam lighting up something that was definitely not a deer. "Oh!"

The man standing in front of him looked like a soldier, he thought later, covered in grime and blood and his eyes as dark and cold as stones at the bottom of a river.

"Where am I?" The voice was deep, roughened.

"What?" Will said, his mind blanking at the question.

Erica came out behind Will, all thoughts of helping him vanishing as she stared at the man in the flashlight beam. The man who pulled a big shiny gun from nowhere and pointed it at them, the click loud in the silence between them.

Will stared at the gun. "W– hey, hey."

"Where's the road?" The man raised his voice slightly, staring at them.

_This is what it feels like to face Death_, Will thought incoherently. It was a thought he'd remember later on, one that made him feel more heroic about the situation in the safety of retrospect.

"Twelve miles, that way." He pointed in the direction of the nearest road. The man's eyes cut in that direction briefly, returning to them. On the ground beside the tent's flaps, their backpacks drew his gaze. He took a step closer to them, and they backed away. Neither could believe it when he grabbed Will's blue pack and snatched it up, running straight into the darkness of the woods.

"Holy crap," Will said, his vision greying slightly around the edges, his knees wobbling and shaking. "What the crap was that?"

Erica stood beside him, staring after the man. This was the absolute last time she was ever going camping. Ever.

* * *

_**Clayton, Louisiana. May 2013**_

Dean started as the hand touched his shoulder, coming to full wakefulness as the man beside him looked back at the road.

"We're here." Alsop touched the brakes and the pickup slowed, pulling off slightly. "S'far as I can take ya, anyways."

Dean nodded, rubbing a hand over his face, the other closing around the strap of the backpack at his feet.

"Down there." He pointed to the narrow dirt lane behind Dean. "Two mile. You'll see the old gates."

"Thanks." Dean opened the door, getting out and squinting in the bright sunlight.

He walked around the front of the truck and started down the lane. _Down there. Two miles_. His mouth curved up to one side. Two miles would be a walk in the park. He shifted the pack higher onto his shoulder and stretched out a little more, finding the long stride that ate up the miles without effort. He'd had enough practice in the last year. His arm twitched.

_Settle down in there_, he thought, sweat beading his forehead as the pain jumped through his nervous system and he shook his arm. _Nearly there, compadre. Nearly there_.

Dusk came quickly and it was full night, the air soft and warm and filled with the whine of insects when he stopped by the pillar. "Lafitte". Alsop'd been right. He walked between the sagging gate posts and picked out the windmill, its sails outlined in the light of the moon just rising, the frame skeletal against pinpricks of stars that filled the black sky.

Five paces from the north-east corner of the windmill. He looked down and measured out the distance with his feet, looking down at the ground when he reached the end.

"This better be you, you son of a bitch," he said softly, and drove the shovel into the earth.

The pain was getting worse. Could the bastard see through his skin, through his eyes at how close they were? Could he feel his bones lying down there in the dirt? He bit back a cry as his arm shuddered, fire racing up and down it from wrist to shoulder.

The thump of the blade of the shovel against something other than dirt was familiar enough. He scraped the soil back, revealing the skeleton lying there, and breathed a sigh of relief. Six feet down and in not too bad condition. Tossing the shovel out of the grave, he pulled himself out, twisting at the lip of the grave to sit on the edge, clenching his fist and setting his jaw against the escalating pain.

"All right." He rolled onto his knees and stood up and his arm was on fire, burning under the skin like lye.

"Hold on, you bastard." Gingerly rolling up the shirt sleeve, he looked down at the pulsing red and gold lump under his skin. "Hold on!"

His arm was … writhing … the entity held in it impatient to be out. He slit the skin across the throbbing bulge carefully, relieved for the keenness of the blade, twisting his arm slowly and extending it over the grave.

"_Anima corpori. Fuerit corpus. Totem resurgent."_

_Christ, it hurt more coming out than it had going in_, he thought, a groan escaping between his teeth as he clenched his fist tight and the final drops hit the bones. The interior of the grave was lit up, the almost solid light soaking into the skeleton, lighting up each bone as it took possession.

Dean fell against the pile of dirt beside the grave, holding his arm. "Wow."

He rolled down his sleeve, his breath coming out in short gasps as the memory of the pain persisted in his flesh. Behind him, Benny appeared. He felt his presence instantly.

"Well, that was fast," he said, grudgingly impressed.

"No thanks to you. The hell took you so long?" Benny asked him truculently, the smile in the crinkle of his eyes.

Dean staggered to his feet, holding his arm close. "You're welcome."

Benny tilted his head this way and that, the bones cracking in the still night air.

"Everything working?"

"Good enough," Benny said, opening his mouth wide. Over the existing teeth a second set descended, pointed and longer than those they covered. They withdrew a moment later and he looked back at Dean.

"So... what now?"

"Like we talked about, I guess." Dean looked at him, his expression wary, but warmth in his eyes.

Benny nodded, looking down for a moment. "Then this is goodbye."

Dean felt something close inside of him at the word. Goodbyes were a part of his life, usually a permanent part. The man – _the vampire_ – in front of him had been with him up the sharp end, and the bond that created, the ties that forged, were not simple or painless to lay aside, no matter how much they both knew it was necessary. Essential.

"Keep your nose clean, Benny. You hear me?"

Benny walked toward Dean and held out his hand, Dean putting his own into it and shaking it. They looked at each other for a moment, and he felt the memories of a thousand kills, of blood and fear and desperation crowd painfully into his mind.

"We made it, brother. I can't believe it," Benny said, laughing softly, and pulling Dean close to him, his arms going around him.

"You and me both," Dean agreed with a wide smile over the vampire's shoulder. And then some, he thought. He was acutely aware that the air he was breathing was fresh and filled with scents and tastes. That the sounds he could hear, close and distant were cars and motorbikes and a plane flying somewhere a mile above them. There were monsters here too, he knew, but they weren't here in force and here he needed to eat. To drink. To sleep. He would not heal magically here. To be fatally wounded was to die.

The vampire pressed against him was vulnerable here. More so than himself, he thought. He tightened his hold on Benny then released him, stepping back slightly.

"Don't do anything stupid, Benny."

The lazy, three-cornered smile spread over the vampire's face for a moment, then faded. "You neither, _cher_."

* * *

_**Kermit, Texas. May 2013.**_

The bedroom was striped as the moonlight shone through the slatted blinds at the windows. Sam packed his duffle quietly, looking around. This place was theirs, his and hers. Theirs. It was the first time since college that he'd been in one place for so long. Made one place his own. His chest was constricting and he forced the air from his lungs, drawing in another breath more quietly. He heard Amelia's breathing change, from sleep to waking, but didn't acknowledge it. They'd said all they needed to say and he had to go. He ruffled Riot's fur and walked to the door, stopping for a moment in the doorway, doubts rising again. He'd told her he'd be back. It was up to her to believe him, believe in him. He closed the front door quietly as he left the house.

Getting into the Impala, he thought of the distance. Two days. He'd make Casper in about fifteen hours and get some sleep, then head out again from there. The engine rumbled as he turned the key, and he pulled out, headlights bright against the night, the familiar noises and smells of the car soothing the nameless anxiety he'd felt since hearing his brother's voice.

_Alive_. He was alive. And back.

* * *

_**Somewhere along NM-39 N, New Mexico.**_

First light filled the car with pale shades of mauve, and Sam gradually realised that the headlights were no longer lighting the road ahead of him, their brightness washed out by the dawn. He glanced at the dash, at the fuel gauge and thought about filling up, getting something to eat and another cup of coffee. He felt tired, but there was a buzz along his nervous system as well, a tension he couldn't release, couldn't expel.

"_You said you wanted a normal life, Sam," Amelia had said, looking at his face as he'd closed the phone._

"_I do."_

"_So running off now, that's how you're going to get it?" The words had held a faint accusatory edge, and he'd known that she was feeling the abandonment, feeling him slipping from her. He turned and sat down beside her, taking her hand._

"_It's not rational, okay. I know that, but this is a leftover – it's something I have to do before I can do anything else," he'd said, trying to find the words to make her understand. It was a responsibility that he'd shirked, that he'd left behind along with the phones, along with the jobs that he'd seen in the newspapers and turned a blind eye to._

"_He's my brother, my family."_

_That hadn't been the right thing to say. She couldn't argue with that and it had made the abandonment more real for her._

"_I gave up on everything," he tried again. "And some of the things that I gave up on were things that I shouldn't have, should've tried harder to get done."_

"_I don't understand."_

"_I know," he'd shaken his head helplessly. "I don't really myself. What we do, Dean and me, what we did, I have to get it clear with him that for me that's over with now."_

_Amelia pulled in a deep breath, not looking at him, but understanding what he'd been trying to say. "Closure."_

"_Kind of, I guess," Sam said, shrugging. It wasn't really, nothing was ever resolved in his life, just pushed to a different place. "It's important."_

_She'd nodded. "Will you come back?"_

"_Yes." That he was sure of._

He thought of the conversation as the first rays of sunlight stretched out over the desert around him, lighting up the rocks and bare, dry fields, lighting up the side of his face and the inside of the car and the great open bowl of the sky to his right.

He wanted that life now, now that he could see it. Wanted the quiet routine of the days and peaceful contentment of the nights. Wanted the growing feelings for the woman left behind and where that might lead, what it might lead to. He wasn't healed. But he thought, that maybe, in time, he could be. It just wouldn't be with her.

* * *

_**Whitefish, Montana. May 2013.**_

The tyres crunched over the gravel outside the cabin, and Sam touched the brake, peering up at the windows for any sign of movement. There were none, but that didn't mean anything. He turned off the engine and got out, the clunk of the door loud in the silence of the mountainside.

Opening the front door, he couldn't see anything different inside, everything looked just as he'd left it. He walked in.

There was no sound or warning when the impact took him from the side, just a hard, steely strength and weight on him, the cold splash of water pouring over him.

"What the –? I'm not a demon." He shook his head, twisting to look at the man above him. It was his brother, he thought remotely, but not. His heart skipped a beat as he saw the shadows and hollows in Dean's face.

The sharp chemical smell of borax filled his nostrils as the liquid spilled down his neck.

"Or a Leviathan. What –"

Fingers like iron rods closed around his wrist and the razor keen edge of a blade sliced into his skin, shockingly bright as the nerves registered pain.

"Or a shifter. Good." Dean got to his feet, leaving his brother lying on the floor. "My turn. Come on. Let's go." He held the bottles of holy water and borax out for Sam.

"I don't need to," Sam said, holding his arm and looking up at him. "I know it's you."

"Damn it, Sammy!" Dean said irritably, as he poured the borax and holy water over himself, and then held out the knife to him. "Come on!"

"No! Dean, can I just say hello?"

Dean's mouth thinned slightly as he rolled up his sleeve and made a cut across the inside of his forearm.

"All right." He looked at Sam, smiling as he wound a bandanna over the cut. "Well ... let's do this."

"I don't know whether to give you a hug or take a shower," Sam said, looking at his brother, down at himself.

Dean laughed. "Come here."

As he felt Dean's arms close around him, Sam let go of the last of his deeply held fear, feeling it seep out of him. A year was a long time not to look at something, not to let something out. He tightened his hold on his brother, gradually registering that the muscle under his hands was like iron, and that he could feel a thrum through Dean's frame, not a shiver, or a tremor, but a fast vibration. He pulled back, looking into his face. For a second, he saw some expression in Dean's eyes, some darkness. It was gone and he realised he didn't want to know what it had been.

"Dude. You're... freakin' alive," he said, turning and walking away, lifting his hands and running them over his face as he simultaneously tried to absorb the reality of it, and the implications for himself. "I mean, what the hell happened?"

"Well, I guess standing too close to exploding Dick sends your ass straight to Purgatory," Dean said lightly, watching him.

"So you _were_ in Purgatory? For the whole year?"

"Yeah, time flies when you're running for your life." He looked away, not catching the emphasis in the words.

"Well, how'd you get out?"

"I guess whoever built that box didn't want me in there any more than I did," he said, the shadowy expression flicking across his face again before it was covered by a humourless smile.

Sam looked blank. "What does that mean?"

"I'm here, okay?" Dean said quietly, feeling a humming in his nerves. So much he couldn't talk about now.

"What about Cas? Was he there?" Sam asked.

Dean turned away, walking a few steps, then stopping, and Sam saw the tension in his shoulders, in his back.

"Yeah, Cas didn't make it."

"What does that mean?" The tone in his brother's voice had been off. There was a lot Dean wasn't saying out loud. There was a lot neither of them were saying out loud.

"Something happened to him down there. Things got pretty hairy towards the end, and he ... just let go," Dean said slowly.

"Cas is dead? You saw him die?"

"I saw enough."

"So, then what, you're not sure?" Sam looked at him, trying to see past the tension and omissions. He wasn't sure why Dean wasn't being honest about it. And that worried him.

Dean turned back to him. "I said I saw enough, Sam."

"Right." Sam recoiled slightly from the warning implicit his brother's tone. Dean looked liked a stranger. A stranger who didn't know him, and didn't care about him.

"Dean, I'm sorry." Cas had been his brother's friend. The loss could have been the reason, he thought. Something told him it wasn't – at least it wasn't all of it.

"Me too," Dean said shortly, and took a breath, turning away. "So you – I can't believe you're actually here."

He walked to the fridge and pulled out a couple of beers. "You know that half your numbers are out of service? Felt like I was leaving messages in the wind."

Putting one of the bottles on the table for his brother, he sat down and opened the other, looking up at Sam.

_Well, here it is_, Sam thought. "Yeah, I-I didn't get your messages."

"How come?"

"Probably because I ditched the phones."

"Because ...?" Dean's brows drew together as he looked at him.

"I guess, um ... I guess something happened to me this year, too," he said quietly, shrugging. "I don't hunt anymore."

Dean grinned. "Yeah."

Sam looked down, exhaling loudly.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What?" Dean pressed a little harder. "You quit?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I – you were gone... Dean. Cas was gone, Bobby was dead. I mean, Crowley even shipped off Kevin and Meg to parts unknown."

"So you just turned tail on the family business."

"Nothing says "family" quite like the whole family being dead," he said dryly.

"I wasn't dead." Dean stared at him, shaking his head slowly. He stood up and walked around his brother. "In fact, I was knee-deep in God's armpit killing monsters, which, I thought, is what we actually do."

"Yeah, Dean," Sam felt the old defences rising and he pushed them down hard. They didn't need the same old shit. "And far as I knew, what we do is the thing that got every single member of my family killed. I had no one – no one. And for the first time in my life, I was completely alone."

He looked at Dean's face, the cool appraisal he could feel in his brother. Dean, filing away another failing, he thought, another mistake. He tried to bury that thought. "And, honestly, I-I didn't exactly have a roadmap," he added.

"Did you look for me, Sam?" Dean wasn't looking at Sam.

Sam looked at the beer on the table. "I blew up the labs. I nuked Roman's networks and data. I drove from Boston to LA to get some kind of information – any kind of information on how to get into Purgatory," he said softly, turning to look at Dean. "The next eclipse isn't until 2013, you know."

"And …?" Dean's tone was very quiet.

"And I ran out of options. Ran out of leads," Sam said. "And then I ran out of hope."

"So you quit?"

"Yeah, I quit," Sam admitted. "Look, I'm still the same guy, Dean."

"Well, bully for you." The smile wasn't a smile. "I'm not."

Dean walked out of the cabin, closing the door behind him. Sam looked at the door, then at the floor. _It probably could've gone better_, he thought. _Couldn't've gone much worse_.

"Welcome back," he murmured softly.

* * *

The cabin seemed better at night. Smaller, but the lamps gave a softer light, hid the dirt and the mess, made it look homier, Sam thought, stirring the canned stew on the stove. He turned as he heard the thump of a box on the table.

Dean was sitting on the sofa, looking through the box of phones. Should've really gotten rid of those, Sam thought, with a slight sigh.

"You want something to eat?" he asked his brother. Dean pulled out an earpiece, unkinking the length of wire.

"Pass." His gaze flicked up to Sam and back to the box as he put the earpiece in.

"Okay," Sam said quietly. He turned back to the stove. He closed his eyes as he recognised his father's tactic. No silent treatment. Just frigidly cold courtesy.

He turned off the stove and spooned the hot food into a bowl, setting it on the table and sitting. Dean sat on the sofa, completely still, listening to the messages. Sam felt a shiver as his brother turned to look at him, his expression mingled fury and disappointment.

He really was like Dad, Sam thought, feeling his heart leap into his throat at the expression on his brother's face, in his eyes. He felt fourteen again, John's cold gaze on him, knowing he'd done something wrong, really wrong, uncertain of what it was.

"What?"

Dean pulled the earpiece out and put the phone message on speaker, increasing the volume.

_"Sam Winchester, it's Kevin Tran. Crowley had me in this warehouse, and I just escaped. I don't know where I am. And I don't know if he or – or any other demons are still after me. I need your help. Call me back. It's Kevin Tran."_

Sam listened, his stomach sinking. So much for Crowley.

"When was that?"

Dean looked back at the phone and played the next message, his face stoney.

_"Sam Winchester. It's Kevin Tran. I called you a week ago. Call me, please. I don't know what the hell I'm doing out here, man."_

_Christ. No._

"Okay," he said, nodding and getting to his feet and walking around the table. "I get it. So, what, you want to ... strategize or something?" He looked at his brother, knowing it wasn't okay, it would never be okay.

Dean ignored him, playing the next message, and looking up at him.

_"Sam, it's Kevin. I'm... Whoo! I'm so good."_

Sam frowned, listening. "Is he...drunk?"

_"Three months since you ditched my ass. Haven't slept for more than four hours a night. It's all good in the hood. Uh, if you're still alive, eat me."_

Dean looked back at the phone, forwarding to the next message. Sam felt that sudden surge of memory again, crossing over, his father staring at him, not explaining what he'd done wrong, showing him. Show and tell with his father. Never to be forgotten.

_"Eat me!"_

Dean looked back at Sam, brows raised. Sam met his gaze, and looked away.

_"Sam, it's been six months. I can only assume you're dead. If not, don't try and reach me. You won't be able to. I won't be calling this number anymore."_

He closed his eyes briefly at the change in Kevin's voice. The flat inevitability of the kid's words. He looked at the floor as Dean stood slowly, his expression filled with a disappointment that looked identical to John's.

"He was our responsibility," Dean said, his voice low. He threw the phone at Sam's chest. "And you couldn't answer the damn phone."

The difference was … when John had made his point, and he'd felt like a piece of shit on the man's shoe, his brother had been standing behind him, waiting for their father to leave, waiting to tell Sam it was okay, it wasn't so terrible, whatever it was he'd done, waiting to make him feel better. Now there was no one. And he knew that Dean was right. Kevin had been left out in the cold, on his own. Six months he'd managed to stay clear of Crowley and the demons, six months on his own. Twelve months now. On his own.

* * *

Sam bent closer to the speaker, listening to the message again. There was something under Kevin's voice, it didn't sound like distortion. He glanced at the sofa. Dean was sitting there, reading something. He could still see the disapproval and anger in the stillness of his position. The cabin was uncomfortably cold with the tension between them.

There it was, a voice, a definite voice.

"All right, listen to this – Kevin's last message. Listen to the background," he said, looking at the back of Dean's head. For a moment it didn't move, then he saw him turn his head slightly.

"_If not, don't try and reach (last) me. (stop) You (Centreville) won't be able to. I won't be calling this number anymore."_

"Hear that?"

"What is it?" Dean turned his head a little further.

"I think he was on a bus. Listen again." He re-cued the message and adjusted the track volumes.

_"Last stop – Centreville."_

Dean stood up and walked over to the table, holding his beer as he looked at his brother.

"Centreville? Centreville, where?"

"Michigan," Sam answered, pulling up the search window.

"And why would Kevin be in Centreville, Michigan?" he asked, wondering at Sam's sudden industriousness in finding the teenager who'd needed him and whom he'd abandoned. Along with his brother, of course.

"Because ..." Sam said, entering Kevin's name and hitting the Enter key. "His high-school girlfriend goes to college there." He turned the laptop around, showing Channing Ngo's details on the screen.

"That's thin." Dean glanced at the screen.

"It's the best lead we got," Sam's gaze cut away and back.

""We"?" He looked down at his brother, brows drawing together. He watched as Sam looked away, all pretence of things being normal jettisoned.

"You were right," Sam said simply. "He was our responsibility. So... let's find him, okay?"

Dean looked at him consideringly. He didn't know if his brother was acting out of guilt or responsibility or just trying to smooth out what had happened between them. He wondered vaguely if that mattered. He couldn't relax. Couldn't stop the micro adrenaline surges that hit him with every unknown noise, every flickering shadow that crossed his peripheral vision. He needed Sam to be around, needed him to feel grounded, if only a little, until he could adjust, get his own head clear again. He was being split between wanting things to be back to normal, and knowing that now, they never could be.

* * *

They walked down the steps to the car. Dean looked at her as Sam opened the trunk. The old rush, the old affection and love he'd felt for her was … not gone, not entirely, but muted, washed out, like the way he'd felt about a favourite toy after he'd grown too old to play with it. He sighed. He wanted those feelings back. He wanted her to be more than just a way to get from A to B. He wasn't sure if they would come back.

Looking at the weapons in the trunk, he felt his mouth lift slightly at one corner. How many times had he wished for this arsenal. But he'd managed without it. The stone axe lay tucked alongside the long machetes. He let his gaze linger on it. It was tangible. Real. Proof that it all happened, exactly the way he remembered it. It also sent a jolt of electricity through his nervous system to look at it. He closed the false lid and threw his bag on top, shutting the trunk lid and walking automatically to the driver's side.

"Hey."

He looked up and caught the keys as they flew over the roof. He stopped next to the door and looked over her again, feeling Sam's expectation of some sort of comment.

"Well ... no visible signs of douchery – I'll give you that," he said, looking back at Sam. They got in and the smell hit him immediately. He'd smelled every variety of canine, at close quarters and under every kind of condition. And what he could smell now was faint but recognisable. "Smell like dog to you?"

Sam inhaled deeply, looking around. "In the car?"

"You tell me," he said, looking suspiciously at his brother. Sam shrugged, brows rising nearly to his hairline.

He turned the key and even the sound, the song of the car did little more than brush at his memories. He frowned as he pulled out of the gravel turnaround, feeling the missing parts as if they were holes, a cold wind whistling through them, through him.

* * *

_**Palm Motel, Dickinson, North Dakota.**_

He pulled up in front of the room, and stopped the engine, sitting and listening to the noises surrounding them. Traffic on the road. Another plane. A jackhammer somewhere more distant. He could hear the swooping variations in the conversation of two woman talking on the other side of the lot. Sam was looking at him.

"I'll get a room," Sam said, getting out.

Dean sat there for a moment longer, then opened the door. The light was bright still, flat and grey under the low cloud cover, but still bright. His eyes narrowed against it. He was hungry. He looked around and saw the machine, tucked against the motel wall.

When he reached it, he looked at the packets of chips and the chocolate bars, bags of peanuts – salted, non-salted, dipped in chocolate, roasted – and candies helplessly. He couldn't remember what any of it tasted like.

He recognised the packets. But the contents were … not quite there, in his mind. In his memories.

* * *

Sam opened the trunk and pulled out the bags, slinging his own across his shoulder as he shut the trunk. He turned for the room and stopped, seeing Dean standing next to a vending machine. Something in the stillness of his brother snagged his attention and he stopped, looking at him more closely.

He was staring at it as if he'd never seen one before, he realised abruptly. As if he didn't understand it. He felt a slight shiver run up his spine and he turned away, opening the room door and taking their gear inside. When the bags were on the floor, he debated going back out. He'd seen his brother lost – truly lost – only twice in his life. Both times had scared the crap out of him. Both times had been the result of a fracturing in his brother, something breaking inside of him that he wasn't sure, even now, had ever been repaired. He looked down at the floor. He didn't want to try to reach him. He didn't think he could face seeing Dean like that again.

* * *

"Come on, I got you!"

Dean pulled his attention from the machine and watched as two boys ran toward him, the muted crack-crack of their toy guns ricocheting slightly in his mind.

"No way."

_At that range?_ he thought derisively, _no question, kid. You're dead_.

"You're dead!" The boy obviously thought so too.

"No way, I'm not dead at all!"

Just like – he shut the thought off fast. He was trying not to think about it. Trying to keep it down and buried deep. It didn't stay buried though. It never stayed buried, no matter how much he covered it over with other memories, other events, people, experiences.

It had been hard. Bloody. Painful. Frightening. Lonely. But after awhile, it had gotten, not easier, but more predictable, maybe. More manageable. And for at least some of the time, it had been exhilarating. An adrenaline rush that had no equal. And it had been darkness too.

He dragged in a deep breath, leaning against the smooth glass cover of the machine as the memories tried to break through. He could look back at some of it. But not all of it. Not and remain sane.

When the images subsided, he rubbed his hand over his face and looked at the food in the machine. _It wasn't real_, he thought. _None of this_ … he looked around at the parking lot, at the road and stores and businesses beyond it … _none of it was real_.

* * *

He sat on the edge of the bed, hearing things outside, his nerves thrumming with tension. _It wasn't safe to stay in one place too long. They could be found. They needed to keep moving_. His hands itched slightly and he rubbed them together absently, his head turning slightly as he caught more sounds from outside.

Sam came out of the bathroom and looked at him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he said, his attention on the cricket that had suddenly stopped calling outside. "Yeah, what do you say we blow this joint, hit the road?"

_Keep moving. Just keep moving_. His night vision was all shot to hell with the lights in here.

Sam looked at him blankly. "Now?"

"Yeah, Kevin's not getting any more found," Dean struggled to find a reason for his brother. One that did not include how fucking unsafe it was to stay in one place for too long.

Sam smiled a little, leaning against the door frame. "The kid survived a year without us. He'll be okay for another twelve hours. Besides, when's the last time you slept?"

Dean looked down at his hands, then away from them. "Hmm."

"What?"

"Nothing," he said, looking back up at his brother. "Is that, uh, that how you rationalized taking a year off?"

Sam straightened, feeling defensive.

Dean gestured broadly. "People will be okay?"

"People were okay, Dean," Sam said, exhaling. "You're okay."

Dean smiled disbelievingly. "Wow."

"Look, I did what we _promised_ we'd do," Sam said slowly. "I moved on. I lived my life."

"Yeah, no, I'm getting that," he agreed readily.

Sam stepped away from the door, and walked to the bed next to his brother's. "Look, it wasn't like I was... just oblivious," he added, gesturing widely. "I mean, I read the paper every day. I saw the weird stories, the kind of stuff we used to chase." He sat on the bed.

"And you said what? "_Not my problem_"?"

"Yes," Sam replied firmly. "And you know what? The world went on."

The humour had died out of Dean's face. "People died, Sam."

Sam looked at him patiently. "People will always die, Dean. Or maybe another hunter took care of it. I don't know, but the point is, for the first time, I realized that it wasn't only up to me to stop it."

Dean looked at him for a moment. "Hm. So what was it? Hmm? What could possibly make you stop just like that?"

Sam let out his breath and rolled his eyes. Dean recognised his brother's reluctance.

"A girl? Was there a girl?"

"The girl had nothing to do with it," Sam said quietly, his gaze dropping.

Dean's eyes narrowed slightly. "There _was_ a girl."

"Yeah. There was," Sam admitted tiredly. "And then there wasn't."

For a second, Dean felt something, or saw something in his brother that he hadn't seen for a long time. He recognised it. And he shoved the recognition away, not wanting to look at that part of their past, where it had all begun, years ago, eons ago, it felt like. Back when the only piece missing was his mother.

Sam was looking at him. "Any more questions?"

_No. No more questions_, he thought. Sam had been taking a year off with a girl. He'd been fighting for his life down under … somewhere. And Kevin had been running blind and terrified. _No more questions needed_.


	4. Chapter 4 The Word of God on Demons

**Chapter 4 The Word of God on Demons**

* * *

_**Palm Motel, Dickinson, North Dakota.**_

The room was partially lit by the streetlights outside, coming through the open curtains, and partially by the bathroom light, shining through the doorway on the other side. In the centre, where Sam sat on his bed, and Dean sat on the floor, leaning back against the foot of his, it was dim. It might have made it easier to talk about the things that were important, if there weren't so many things that couldn't be talked about at all, Sam thought.

"Listen, I know this is going to sound crazy to you, I don't even necessarily need you to understand. But ...you need to know. I didn't just drop out, Dean. I _found_ something," he said, looking at the back of his brother's head. "Something I've ... something I haven't had since Jess – something that was only a promise with Jess. But it's real for me now."

Dean looked down at the carpet. "Yeah, what was her name?"

"Amelia," Sam said. He couldn't see Dean's face. Could hear the reluctance in his voice, though. A reluctance to talk about something that had nothing to do with their world.

"So, how'd it happen?"

"I hit a dog," he said, wondering how far the admission would derail the conversation. Did he want to derail it, he wondered?

Dean turned fast and pointed at him. "I knew I smelled dog." The words came out through clenched teeth and Sam sighed.

"And I knew you'd throw a bitch fit," he said.

"Hey, the rules are simple, Sam," Dean snapped back. "You don't take a joint from a guy named Don, and there's no dogs in the car!"

"Do you want to know what happened or do you want to bitch about car?"

Dean looked at him. "Knock yourself out."

"Yeah, there's an invitation to share what happened with you," Sam snorted sourly. He watched Dean turn away. "You don't really give a shit, Dean."

His brother was silent and he drew in a deep breath. "All right, what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Look at you. You've still got that look. You're shaky. You're on edge," Sam said, eyes narrowing as he saw Dean's back stiffen again. "What was it like?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Dean shook his head.

"Try me," Sam said. He was surprised when, after a moment, his brother did try.

"It was bloody," he said quietly. "Messy."

Sam saw him become still, the restlessness settling as he looked inside, remembering. "Thirty one flavours of bottom-dwelling nasties. Hell, most days felt like three hundred and sixty degree combat."

"But there was something about being there. It felt … pure," he added, softly.

Sam watched him as he fell silent, completely still. Looking back, he thought. Into god knew what kind of hell hole. _Three hundred and sixty degree combat_. It explained why Dean's reflexes were faster, why it felt like hugging a statue of stone, instead of someone flesh and blood. It explained the twitchiness he could see almost all of the time, the feeling that maybe Dean couldn't sleep, couldn't get used to the idea of sleeping.

It explained the hardness and the impatience with any choice Sam had made that wasn't related to hunting. It didn't explain why his brother hadn't understood those choices though.

* * *

_**Centreville, Michigan**_

The room was small and bland and anonymous, despite the posters and photos taped and pinned to the walls. One of the girls was sitting in a chair near the bunkbed/desk, laptop on her knees. Channing Ngo, Kevin's girl, stood at the end of the desk, arms folded across her chest, looking at them.

Dean shifted a little, the tight collar and close fit of the suit aggravating the irritation he was trying to keep locked down as he listened to them.

"The last time I saw Kevin was, like, a year ago," Channing said matter-of-factly, looking from Sam to Dean and back to Sam.

"When he disappeared?" Sam asked.

"Mm-hmm." She nodded, screwing up her face at the memory. "He stole his mother's car because he thought he was on a mission from God or something?"

Sam glanced at Dean.

"It was crazy," she added, with a shrug.

"Shut up!" The roommate said, lifting her head to look at them as Channing turned to her. "My friend Adam – who got addicted to Adderall but got a perfs on his SATs, so it was totally worth it – same thing."

"Shut up!" Channing said, rolling her eyes. She looked back at the Winchesters.

"Serious. Mission from God," the roommate added, oblivious.

Sam cleared his throat. "Look, Channing, we know Kevin was here."

"No. He wasn't," she stated flatly.

"And we understand if you're trying to protect him, but," he rolled over her protest, over the dramatised eye roll. "Nobody can protect Kevin better than we can."

"I hate Kevin. I wouldn't protect him," she said disdainfully, staring at him.

Dean frowned at her. "I thought you two had a thing?"

She made a face at him. "Yeah, when he was going to _Princeton_."

"Wow," Dean said, brows rising. "Just like that?"

Channing glanced over her shoulder at the roommate, who nodded. "Yeah."

She looked back at them, smiling smugly. "Mm-hmm."

They walked through the pleasantly manicured and leafy green campus, conspicuous in suits and ties, dodging skateboarders and students.

"So why would Kevin come sniffing around here if not to see her?" Dean asked, his eyes moving ceaselessly around them, looking at every student he could see, assessing, dismissing.

"No idea. Maybe we should split up, ask around, see if anybody's seen him?"

"Yeah, Asian kid, yea high, at a university. That should be easy," Dean said sardonically. Sam shrugged.

"Any other ideas, happy to hear 'em."

* * *

In the cramped dorm room, Channing sat at her desk, rummaging in her open bag. Behind her, her roommate glanced over and straightened slightly in her chair.

"Okay. Are you ready to forget all about what's-his-name? Okay, this guy's name is Kyle, he's Jewish, um, I'm pretty sure he has an Asian thing. Perfs, right?" She glanced at Channing's back then looked back at the screen on her lap.

"Shut up, bitch," Channing snapped, the chair swinging around as she got up, an engraved bronze bowl in one hand, a small wide-bladed knife in the other. She strode across the room to the roommate.

"What?" The girl looked at the knife, her gaze flicking to the black filled eye sockets, unable to comprehend either.

The knife slashed from right to left, separating skin, cartilage, muscle and tendon. Channing gripped the girl's head firmly as blood spurted from the carotid artery into the bowl, filling it with surprising speed. She pushed the girl out of the chair when she had enough. _Sweet Lucifer_, she thought, looking down at the girl as she bled out, she'd thought teenagers were bad in the fifteen hundreds.

"_Inferni clamavi ad te regem sermonos meos_," she intoned over the bowl and the blood began to bubble, then boil as the connection to her master was made.

"The Prophet still has not yet shown his face to me. But you should know Dean Winchester is back."

* * *

Sam looked down at the laptop screen, then up as he heard the bark of a dog. It hadn't sounded anything like Riot's but it brought up what he'd been trying hard not to think about. Dean had been right about his responsibility to Kevin. About their responsibility to Kevin. He couldn't leave now. And the longer it took to find Kevin, the more likely it was that he would never get back a chance at a real life. He wondered if she was still alone. He chewed on the corner of his lip uneasily. How long could it take to find the kid?

The answer was obvious but he didn't want to know it. He looked up as Dean sat down opposite him.

"Don't judge me. I got bupkis," he said tiredly, throwing his hands in the air.

"Well ..." He looked up as a waitress came up to the table, setting a burger and fries down beside him.

"And here you go," she said, turning and leaving.

"Ah, thank you," Sam said, pushing the plate across the table to his brother.

"Sweet mother of God," Dean said reverently, looking down at the plate. "It's for me? Seriously?"

Sam's brow creased slightly at Dean's uncertain expression. He nodded and looked back at the screen. "Check this out. So, I went through campus security archives around the time Kevin should have been here."

Dean unwrapped the burger and took a bite, eyelids fluttering shut as the ambrosial mixture of tastes filled his mouth.

"Anyone look familiar?" Sam asked, turning the laptop with a freeze-frame of Kevin on the screen around to face Dean.

"Dude."

Dean's eyes snapped open, looking at him.

"It's a burger," Sam said mildly.

"It's a treasure," Dean corrected him, still chewing. "All right, so, what, Kevin comes all the way to campus and doesn't see his girlfriend?"

"I don't know... but I went to the computer lab and found the computer he was on."

"And?" Dean took another bite. The burger was better than good. It was unbelievable. It was moist yet firm, tangy yet rich. The bread roll was crunchy on the outside, yet as soft as cloud on the inside. The way the lettuce and tomato and onion provided the contrasts to the pattie, and all of it …

Sam looked at him, seeing his attention drifting off, and started talking - fast. "And I found the website he was visiting, found his account username, hacked in to the website, found when else this username logged in, and then I reverse-tracked the IP address back to the original user, Kevin, who has apparently been using the same wireless router for the past two months."

… Dean lost track of his thoughts on the burger as Sam hammered the information at him. He looked at his brother dryly.

"That is spectacular work. Any chance I can get that in English?" He ate a fry, swallowing the mass of food down hard.

"Yeah. I think he's in Iowa – at a coffee shop," Sam said, swivelling the laptop around again. It was good to see that Dean's appetite – and food appreciation – hadn't been marred by the past year, he thought. It was going to take time to find Kevin, no matter which way he looked at it. And seeing the way his brother was right now, he didn't feel exactly easy leaving him either.

* * *

_**Fairfield, Iowa**_

Sam woke abruptly at the faint noise. He looked around the motel room and saw Dean standing by the window.

"Man, go back to bed. You gotta get some sleep."

Dean turned his head slightly and looked back outside. Sam rolled onto his side, pulling the covers back and swinging his legs to the floor.

"What is it?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit," Sam said, running his fingers over his head. "Don't lie, not now, not after … everything."

For a long time, Dean stood there, and Sam didn't think he was going to answer. Then he turned around, and started to pace the room restlessly.

"I don't sleep great – yet," he said, glancing at his brother as he passed him. "Didn't have to down there, and you couldn't, not really. You could rest a bit, but it wasn't safe to stay in one spot too long, Sammy."

"What do you mean?" Sam stared at him. "You didn't sleep at all for a year?"

Dean shook his head. "It wasn't like that. There was … something there, I can't explain it."

He stopped in the middle of the room. "I didn't have to eat either. That was weird."

And that explained the burger reaction, Sam thought. "So you've been moving, hunting, fighting, literally non-stop … for a year?"

"Yeah." He looked at the window and walked back to it. "Felt like longer."

Sam couldn't raise a smile at the joke and Dean looked away. Sam looked at him, wondering how long it would take before that hair-trigger tension would dissolve. Would it ever dissolve? He thought it might, maybe. One day.

"How is it – I mean, to be back here, where that's, uh, that's not needed so much?"

"I don't know," Dean shrugged. "Every noise, every flicker of shadow or light. I can't shut it off."

"You can't keep going like this," Sam said. "You'll burn out."

Dean laughed softly. "The last year didn't burn me out. This won't."

_It will, bro, you just won't notice until it's too goddamned late_. He thought of the speed of Dean's attack in the cabin. Everything had a price. Sometimes you didn't see it until it was too late. Sometimes the price was a lot higher than you were prepared to pay. Of all people, he thought that Dean knew that.

_It felt pure_, his brother had said. He wanted to ask what Dean had meant by that. Pure in what sense, exactly. Kill or be killed? That was pure, in its own way. It wasn't possible here, in the real world though.

He got up and pulled the salt canister from his bag, popping the lid as he walked to the window. He tipped a line along the window ledge and then another across the threshold of the room's front door.

"Get some sleep, Dean. We're okay now," he said, putting the lid back on. "We'll be safe until morning."

Dean looked at the salt lines and nodded slowly, walking to the bed and lying down on it. Sam watched as he closed his eyes, walking back to his bed. What the hell was going on in Dean's mind, he wondered? What had really happened to him?

* * *

The church was an old, simple frame building, clad in weatherboard, the paint peeling here and there. To one side, mature trees were planted thickly, screening and protecting it, leaving a narrow dirt yard between the woods and the building. On the other side, the ground dropped away to the road below.

Dean pulled up next to the trees and they got out, walking around the corner of the building to the steps that led to the front door. A plain timber railing formed a banister and balustrade around the landing.

"A church? You sure this is right?" Dean asked Sam in a low voice as they approached the steps.

"Guy at the coffee shop swears he's seen Kevin ducking in here for the past few months," Sam said. They climbed the steps and stopped in front of the door. Sam tried the handle, then knocked. Dean pulled out his lockpicks and sorted through them.

"Kevin. It's Sam and Dean Winchester. Open up."

He leaned against the door, listening for a moment, then shook his head. Dean stepped forward, crouching a little in front of the door as he slid the torque wrench and pick into the lock and felt through the pins. The lock clicked a moment later and they opened the door.

Inside, the church was cool and shadowy, the evidence of neglect more apparent in the water marks and stains and scoured paintwork of the walls, the missing or broken panes in the windows. The vestibule was small and they moved cautiously through the next set of doors into the main room.

Kevin Tran fired at point blank range.

"Don't! Stop! Stop!" Dean yelled, holding his hands over his face as the heavy duty water rifle fired streams of liquid borax over them. He lowered his hands as the spray stopped. "Not Leviathans. It's us."

"What the hell happened to you guys?" Kevin asked accusingly, the rifle still aimed at them.

Dean dropped his gaze, feeling the liquid dripping off his face and soaking through his jacket. "Cliff Notes? I went to Purgatory. Sam hit a dog."

Kevin stared at him. "For real?"

He glanced at him then wiped the borax from his face with his soaked sleeves.

"You want some towels?"

* * *

The main room long and narrow, fitfully lit by the stained glass windows. Over the walls and floor, sigils and wards and guards had been painted. Dean and Sam looked around, expressions veering from wariness to astonishment as they took in the protections that layered the place.

"Who taught you all this?" Dean asked, wiping his face and neck with Kevin's towel.

"I guess ... God." Kevin said, looking around as he walked down the aisle in front of them.

Sam stopped. "God taught you how to trap demons?"

Kevin turned around to face them. "Technically, yeah."

"Wait, wait, hold on. Crowley kidnapped you. I saw that," Sam said, eyes narrowed as he looked at Kevin. "But then you left a message saying you escaped. How?"

"Well ... it's kind of a long story."

Dean looked at Sam. "Got all day."

Kevin shrugged. "We were in the lab, then we were somewhere else. I didn't find out the name of the town – or city, or wherever it was. I don't even know how long I was there for. This demon just walked me into a warehouse and Crowley was in there, waiting."

"There was a tablet there, like the last one," he continued, eyes half-closed as he looked at the memory. It hadn't been so long ago. It felt like it had been a long time ago.

"Wait, there's another tablet? So another Word of God," Dean interrupted, glancing at Sam.

"Yes."

"How many Words of God are there?" he asked, affronted by the thought of more. Just the one had caused enough trouble. Kevin looked up at him disparagingly.

"I just became a Prophet, like, a year ago."

"Well, did this tablet have a name?" Sam asked.

Kevin looked at him. "Demons."

"What about demons?" Dean cut in.

Kevin remembered the tablet's contents, the traps and the warnings, the summonings and the incantations and the descriptions. "As far as I could tell ... everything."

"Crowley wanted me to find something specific, but he didn't want to lead me to it. Didn't want me to know what it was that was important to him," he looked at them, seeing that they understood that about the demon who had styled himself the King of Hell. "There was one thing that stood out, one thing that I thought he wouldn't know himself. So I told him I could see something about the Hell Gates."

"What about Hell Gates?" Sam's voice filled with worry.

"There's one in Wisconsin. The tablet told me how to open it. There were ingredients for a spell," he replied. "They got the ingredients and I followed the instructions."

"You showed the King of Hell how to open a Hell Gate?" Dean asked incredulously, his voice getting higher. "So that all the demons in Hell could come out all at the same time?"

Kevin looked at him. "What? No."

He turned away, walking down the room, a deeply satisfied smile filling his voice as well as lighting up his face. "I told Crowley I was opening a Hell Gate, but I was reading from another chapter – how to destroy demons."

Dean started to grin as he followed Kevin between the pews. "You son of a bitch."

Kevin turned around, the smile widening.

"Wait. Kevin? Where's the tablet now?" Sam asked.

The smile disappeared. "Safe."

"Safe where?" Sam pressed. _No matter where the kid had hidden it, it wasn't safe. _Nothing in their life had ever been safe.

"Hey. As long as it's safe, okay?" Dean cut in, a warning in the look he gave Sam. He turned back to Kevin. "You read anything else off the tablet before you stashed it?"

Kevin smiled wryly. "Only the stuff about closing the gates of Hell." He paused for effect then added. "Forever."

Dean blinked. _Kevin had not just said what he'd thought he'd said. Had he?_ "Come again?"

"Banish all demons off the face of the Earth, lock them away forever," he smiled at Sam, and turned to Dean. "That could be important, right?"

Dean and Sam exchanged a look.

"Closing the gates of Hell forever?" he said, rolling the words around his mouth as he savoured them, savoured the thought of the earth demon-free, savoured the idea of Crowley, gone, locked down for good. "Yeeaah. Yeah, that could be important."

* * *

No more demons. _Ever_. He couldn't get his head around it. Like winning a hundred million dollar lottery, there was no way to deal with something that big, that final, all in one hit. But he wanted it. He wanted it so badly he could smell and taste and feel it, a white fire racing through his nervous system as powerful as a full-throttle orgasm.

He looked out over the railing, then turned to Sam as he moved up beside him. "Okay, if this kid is right, he's sitting on a bombshell. Hell, he is the bombshell."

Sam exhaled gustily, leaning on the railing and looking away.

"What?"

"That. I mean, there's no way that Kevin's getting out of this intact, is there?"

"Well, he's doing pretty well for himself so far." Dean glanced back at the church doors. He was impressed with Kevin, he had to admit it. For a total civilian, the kid had been resourceful, smart and courageous as hell to double-cross Crowley, get out with his hide intact, and stay out of the demon's clutches for a full year.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, he got out."

"And now he's in it," Dean said with certainty. "Whether he likes it or not."

Sam looked at him, a half-smile crossing his face and disappearing at the tone of Dean's voice. "So ... free will, that's only for you?"

Dean looked at him. "And that's supposed to mean?"

"You fought against being dragged into the power plays of demons and angels, Dean. Doesn't he get that chance?"

Dean dragged in a breath. "Sam, we fought against it – _we _– and we never got out, never got clear. Not once."

Sam looked away. Dean stared at him, brows drawn together.

"I can't believe what I'm hearing. We have an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. We take Kevin to the tablet, he tells us the spell, we send every demon back to hell – forever. And you're not sure?"

It would take months, Sam thought. Maybe longer. He could feel the buzz of energy rising from his brother. Feel the hunter whetting his blade and testing the edge, lips drawn back from bared teeth, ready and willing to fight to the last breath, the last drop of blood. But under that, he could feel – he was sure he could feel something else – something that was manic and wild and could lose control in an eyeblink. And that scared the hell out of him.

* * *

Even with the candles, the church was dark at night, the single streetlight down the road below not reaching to throw against the windows. Sam looked around, and saw Kevin sitting on a pew near the front. He walked down the aisle and sat down in the pew behind him.

"Kevin, I, uh ... I owe you an apology. Um ... look, when you disappeared and Dean disappeared, I ... needed to clear my head, and ... I'm thinking maybe you were one of the pieces that I should have been there to pick up." His face screwed up as he heard the words come out of his mouth. He sounded like a dick. "I'm sorry. Sorry I didn't come when you called. Sorry I wasn't around to help you."

"You've been a hunter since you were a kid, right?" Kevin asked, looking toward the altar.

"Yeah, mostly," _Except for two years of freedom. Two years of normal_. "Yeah."

"Ever since I realized – I _accepted_ - that I was a prophet ... it's … just hard to believe this is actually my life." He exhaled softly. Sam looked at him and thought that it was probably an understatement. _No matter what you accepted, it was still a hard gig to get your head around the fact that supernatural creatures with powers that far outstripped your own, were hunting for you, gunning for you_. Kevin had done extraordinarily well for someone with no background, no training. But then, Sam thought belatedly, he'd had God on his side.

"If we can do this, get the tablet, get you everything you need to close the gates of Hell, there's a world out there where nobody – not Crowley, no demon – is chasing you anymore," Sam said quietly. Kevin turned to look at him.

"I guess I just don't see how I get from here to there," he said with a slight shrug.

"I used to not be able to see it, either," Sam told him. "But there is a way."

After a moment, Kevin nodded. "Just give me five minutes."

Sam nodded, leaning back in the pew as Kevin got to his feet and walked out through the doorway at the nave end of the room.

In the shadows by the main door, Dean stopped and looked at his brother. Sam was staring at nothing, his shoulders hunched.

Dean looked at Sam, one brow raised a little. "You give Kevin the big it'll-all-be-okay-one-day speech?"

Sam lifted a shoulder. "Seemed a better idea than the you'll-be-dead-one-day option."

His brother shook his head, looking down. "Anything wrong with giving people the straight story, Sam?"

"When you give me the 'straight story', Dean, you can give me a hard time for not doing it, how's that?" Sam straightened, crossing his arms.

Dean looked at him, eyes cold, face like stone.

The building trembled. They both looked down at the floor. On the window sills and cupboard ledges, the flames of the candles were shaking. The trembling increased, and plaster began to drop from the walls, smashing onto the painted floorboards. At the end of the room, Kevin came through the doors, hurrying down to them and Sam brushed Dean's shoulder, gesturing to the floor in front of them, the three of them watching the floorboards crack and lift, along a line. The line passed through the devil's trap that guarded the doors.

"We got company," Dean said, turning from the doors to the gear bag on the pew beside him. "Sam."

He pulled out the serrated knife, passing it to his brother, bone hilt first. Sam took it, and looked along the blade. It was a familiar knife. Ruby's knife. It didn't exactly feel like an old friend, but perhaps a companion in many wars. He looked back at Dean, eyes widening as he saw the weapon his brother had pulled from the bag.

Leaning toward him, he reached out and touched the chipped edge, seeing the fine red line as the razor sharp stone sliced effortlessly through skin of incautious his fingertip. "What the hell is that?"

"It's _Purgatory_," Dean said, hefting the bone handle familiarly. They turned to stand together, shoulder to shoulder in the aisle, Kevin behind them. On the other side of the broken trap, the arched doors burst open, and two men stood there, eyes black.

"Dean Winchester," the taller man said slowly. "Back from Purgatory."

"Spanky, the demon," he quipped as Sam moved back to cover Kevin. Dean pointed the axe toward the demon. "Yeah, I heard about you. You're the one who uses too much teeth, right?"

The taller demon rushed him, hands outstretched with a greater reach. He broke the hold as the hands tightened around his throat, ramming the axe upward into the demon's jaw, forcing it back, swinging wide then jabbing close, the man's face softening under each blow as the bones cracked and fractured.

Fighting demons should be like riding a bicycle, Sam thought as he ducked the first wide-swinging haymaker and slashed upward with the knife. Unfortunately, it was too easy to forget their strength. He blocked the next blow and felt the demon's grip on him, then he was crashing into the wall, under a window, scrambling back to his feet as Kevin squirted a drink bottle full of holy water at the demon's face.

Dean felt a red tide rising in him, and he swung the stone axe and felt it bite into the side of the demon, yanked from his grip as the demon screamed and turned, clattering to the floor. He got in close and slammed the side of his fist into the demon's face, hearing the satisfying crunch of bone on bone, feeling the nose disappear under the impact.

Sam rose behind the demon facing Kevin, wrapping his arm around the still-steaming throat and plunged Ruby's knife deep into the chest, holding on as the man convulsed, the demon inside of him lighting up in volcanic shades.

Dean drove the other demon back, hearing the skull beneath its skin snap after the second king hit, his world narrowed to the enemy he faced and the need to put it down as fast as he could. He gripped the demon's coat, the material creaking as it bunched in his fists and he lifted, throwing the demon over his shoulder onto the table behind them, the table disintegrating almost under the force of the impact. _Kill it. _His fist hit the face, the throat, slammed into the breastbone, repeatedly, his weight behind it. Somewhere, far down deep inside, he knew that if it had just been a man, he'd be beating a dead body now. But the demon's hands reached up, oblivious to the carnage of its vessel and he reared back too late, feeling them tighten around his windpipe, crushing it slowly.

"Dean!" Sam twisted around, reversing Ruby's knife and swinging the hilt into his brother's outstretched hand. Dean's fingers closed tightly around it and he contracted the muscle and tendons of his throat, holding the fingers at bay for a second as he swung the knife and drove it into the chest in front of him. The hands dropped away as the demon coruscated wildly inside the meatsuit.

He leaned back, and rolled back onto his feet, straightening up, the knife held loosely now, blood dripping to the floor beside him.

"Hello, boys."

Dean turned around, already knowing the voice and who was standing insouciantly behind them.

Crowley stood in the doorway, Channing Ngo beside him, her eyes black across the sockets.

"Dean, you're looking ..." Crowley strolled down the aisle toward him, the demon-possessed girl following him. "Well, let's just say Purgatory didn't do you any favours." His gaze cut from side to side. "Where's your angel?"

"Ask your mother," Dean said, his voice rough from the demon's manhandling of his throat.

Crowley almost smiled. "There's that grade-school zip. Missed it. I really did." He glanced at Sam. "Moose. Still with the pork chops. I admire that."

Kevin stared at him. "Let Channing go."

"That's not Channing, Kevin," Dean said abruptly. "Not anymore."

Kevin looked at him uncertainly.

"What an awful thing to say to the boy. Of course it's Channing," Crowley said reprovingly. He looked at Kevin. "Kev. Last time we danced, you stole my tablet and killed my men. Tell you what. Come with me now, bygones. And I'll let the girl go back to... What's-the-Point U."

"He's lying," Dean said, watching Crowley narrowly. "You won't get Channing back. She's probably dead already."

Crowley let out an exasperated sigh. "Will you please stop saying that?" He turned to the demon. "Let the girl speak."

He snapped his fingers and Channing's eyes cleared immediately. Confusion filled her face as she blinked and looked around, a tentative smile appearing when she saw Kevin.

"Kevin?"

"Channing?"

"What's going on?"

Kevin looked at Dean helplessly, then back to Channing. "There's a demon in you."

"What?!" Her eyes widened, and she took a step back, looking at Crowley.

"But it's going to be okay," Kevin said quickly. "I promise."

Dean sent a darkly disbelieving look at him. He ignored it, looking at her.

"I-I-I-I just – I can't," Crowley winced.

"No, no, wait," Kevin stammered, looking at Channing. Crowley snapped his fingers again and Channing's eyes filled with black.

"Okay. I'll do it," Kevin looked back at Crowley.

"Kevin," Sam warned him softly.

"Myself for the girl," Kevin continued, ignoring him.

Next to his brother, Dean swore inwardly. He wasn't about to let Kevin make that trade, or any trade with Crowley. Not now. Not ever.

"But this ends. All right? No fighting, no nothing. It ends," Kevin said, staring at Crowley.

"Can't let you do that, Kevin." Dean said quietly, looking at Crowley.

"Or what? You'll kill me?" Kevin turned to look at him. For once he had the high cards. He'd escaped Crowley once, he could do it again, and he wasn't going to sacrifice anyone to save his own skin. He looked back at Crowley. "I'll grab my stuff."

He turned and walked from the room, not looking at Sam or Dean as he passed them.

"Chin up, gentlemen. I'm a professional," Crowley said reassuringly.

"This ain't over by a long shot, Crowley," Dean promised.

"And as you can see, I'm quivering in anticipation of your next move, as usual," the demon said drolly. "But for now, let's call a deal a deal, and just get with it, shall we?" He looked at the doorway Kevin had gone through. "Come on, Kevin. Chop, chop."

There was no answer from the rear of the church, and Dean wondered if Kevin had decided that those who fight and run away live to fight another day. Crowley clearly was thinking the same thing, his eyes narrowing as he listened for some sound from the back.

"Kevin?"

Crowley took a step forward, and Dean stepped forward as well, raising the serrated knife, Sam filling the gap behind him. Crowley's eyes narrowed and he snapped his fingers. In his hand the blade of Ruby's knife glowed red hot, the heat penetrating the hilt.

"Aah!" Dean dropped the knife as it burned into his palm and along his fingers, looking down at it. Sam glanced down at the knife on the floor and back to Crowley.

"Really, boys." Crowley raised his brows disbelievingly and walked toward Sam, going past him and heading for the back of the church. "Kevin!"

They turned to watch him go, then Dean picked up the knife gingerly, looking at the hilt. There was no sign that the blade tang had ever been hot enough to burn. No charring on the hilt or oily gleam on the metal, the tell of tempered metal heated again.

* * *

Crowley pushed open the door to the sacristy impatiently to see Kevin standing in the middle of the room holding a cord.

"Kevin." The single word was filled with an aggravated disappointment. Kevin yanked on the cord and the long container held above the door was pulled forward against its pivot, dumping the full load of holy water over Crowley and Channing.

"Sam, Dean, run!" Kevin yelled, turning and racing out the rear door of the church.

Dean and Sam bolted out the front, reaching the Impala at the same time as Kevin shot around the corner of the church and pulled open the back door. Dean started the engine and gunned it, flicking on the headlights and driving them out of the churchyard's gates to the road.

Crowley and Channing came out of the front door as the car barrelled down through the gates and Crowley wiped at his face with a handkerchief.

"Find another meatsuit," he said softly to the demon inhabiting the body beside him. A thick ribbon of charcoal smoke poured out of the girl's mouth, writhing and twisting into the night sky. Crowley looked down at the car as it passed the church on the road below, seeing Kevin and Sam looking up at him. He lifted his hand and pressed his fingers against his lips and Channing's head spun sharply to the left, her body falling to the landing limply. In the car below he saw Kevin's mouth open, then the car had passed, increasing its speed and Crowley lifted the handkerchief to his face again, watching the red taillights disappear.

It would take time to find the little twerp in the company of the boys, he thought. But he had time. Eons of it. And he would get the prophet and the tablet back. And then he would do what no other ruler of Hell had ever accomplished before him. Hell would rise on this plane as it had never been able to do before. Demonkind would populate the lands and people … well people would become an endangered species.

* * *

_**One day later. Portage, Indiana**_

Dean pulled the car into the gas station, stopping next to the pumps. He turned the engine off and his phone started to ring. He pulled it out, looking at the screen then lifting it to his ear.

"Hello? … wrong number," he said, hanging up and tucking the phone back into his pocket. "Automated jackass. All right, anybody want anything?"

"I'm good," Sam said quietly. Dean turned to look at Kevin, resting his arm along the back of the front seat. He glanced back at his brother.

Sam turned to look at Kevin, who was sitting silent and angry in the back seat. "Kevin? How you holding up?"

"Great. Just great, Sam. The king of Hell just snapped my girlfriend's neck. How about you?" he said tersely.

Sam looked at his brother. Dean saw it and turned back to Kevin. He – they – didn't need a basketcase prophet riding with them to shut down the underworld under Crowley's nose. He was aware that there was nothing he could do about the way Kevin felt. You dealt with the guilt and grief as best you could and it took however long it took. But he could tell him how it was. He could tell him how it was gonna be.

"All right, listen to me. I'm sorry about your girlfriend, okay? I am. But the sooner you get this, the better. You're in it now, whether you like it or not. That means you do what you got to do," he said, seeing Kevin's anger dissipate slightly under the shock of the truth. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. And he admitted readily to himself that he didn't really care. Kevin had to toughen up or he'd be a liability. "I'm hitting the head."

He got out of the car and headed for the restrooms on the other side of the building.

Sam looked at Kevin apologetically. "He's kind of … focussed right now."

"He's fucking Rambo right now," Kevin retorted furiously. "What does he know about putting someone you care about in danger?"

Sam tipped his head back and closed his eyes. "More than he wants to, Kevin. More than you would ever want to."

Kevin looked at him and felt the anger that his guilt had raised die back a little. "What do you mean?"

Sam shook his head. "Long story." He opened his eyes and turned around again. "Look, the delivery wasn't that great, but the message was valid. This is the road from here to there. When you deal with demons, there are always casualties and they're usually the people you never wanted anything to happen to, do you understand?"

"No," Kevin said mulishly.

"We can't keep people safe any more, Kevin," Sam said, unwillingly. Maybe Dean had had it right. Maybe the truth – as cold and brutal and unyielding as it was – was the only way to deal with what they were going to have to do. "From now on, we don't go near friends or family. We don't make new friends. We don't trust anyone. It's the way it is."

"Sounds like fun," Kevin looked out the window to the busy street beyond the station. "How long for?"

"For as long it takes," Sam said.

* * *

Dean glanced over his shoulder as he rounded the corner of the building and stopped on the other side of the concrete privacy divider next to the restrooms. He pulled out his phone.

"There he is," Benny's soft drawl sounded close and familiar over the airwaves.

"How did you get a phone?" Dean asked peremptorily.

"Would you believe they sell these things in convenience stores now? A lot's changed in 50 years," Benny said, the smile evident in his voice.

"Must be a hell of a lot to take in."

He couldn't imagine how the vampire would do it, could do it. He'd only been down there for a year and he couldn't make the adjustment. Couldn't feel the freedom. _Not yet_, he thought, ignoring the voice that sometimes wondered if he ever would.

"Mostly it's the choices, you know? So many choices." The vampire's voice held a strange note, contented yet not.

"Yeah, I hear that. Listen, Benny, not to beat a dead horse. What we did down there is what we had to do. Now, I don't regret it for a second. But … you know, maybe until we both adjust, it's best we don't talk for a while."

"There it is." Benny's voice softened further, and Dean knew what he meant.

"One day at a time, just like we talked about, right?" he pressed, needing to hear the vampire's acknowledgement, needing it more than he'd realised. He didn't want to hear about the Louisiana vamp someone had taken down, the vamp that had thrown caution to the wind and had lost it, unable to deal with the world so changed.

"I think you had it right, _cher_," Benny said, the smile and contentment gone from his voice.

"What's that?" Dean asked.

"Purgatory was pure. I'm kind of wishin' I had appreciated it more. You know? Like you," he said, a wistfulness, a loneliness in his voice now.

Dean heard it. _Like me_, he thought, not knowing what to make of that. He'd loved the black and white picture until he'd realised that the picture hadn't been black and white, he'd made it that way, and all the shades of grey that he'd hated up here had been there as well, just better hidden under the flat pewter light and the instant decisions governing life and death.

It some ways, of course it'd been pure. And in some ways he could still wish himself back there. Like now, for example. Kevin and the tablet. Guilt and shame and anger and the death of innocent people who were always in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time. But it was a pipedream, that purity, in other ways. It worked fine so long as you never got out. And living down there would have destroyed him if he'd had to stay any longer.

He could still feel the handful of hair he'd held, as he'd watched his own knife tip slip beneath a man's face. The images and memories were locked down, but sometimes his body remembered things that he never allowed his mind to revisit. Sometimes he felt the warm gush of blood over the skin of his hands.

"Listen, you got an emergency, you call me, you understand?" he said, shunting those thoughts aside. He'd said it himself. He didn't regret it, but it didn't belong up here.

"I hear you," Benny said, the smile back in his voice. "You keep your nose clean, too, brother."

"Yeah," Dean said, closing the phone. He couldn't. Nothing was the way he'd thought it would be, when he'd been praying and fighting and struggling to find a way out. All those things he'd hung onto down there had turned out to be illusions.

He leaned back against the concrete wall and closed his eyes. He remembered thinking about food and sleep and sex and … just everything, and he couldn't enjoy any of it, couldn't get near most of it. He'd thought that Sam … he couldn't understand what had happened with Sam and he couldn't ask about it, because he had a secret too. Hell, he had a truckload of secrets that he couldn't tell Sam. Ever. He could already see doubt in his brother's eyes. He knew he wasn't hiding his reactions well – or at all, maybe.

He straightened up. He just needed time, he thought. Time to get used to things again. Time to forget about what happened. That was all. He was still hunting. He still had Sam. It was mostly good.


	5. Chapter 5 Hand That Rocked the Cradle

**Chapter 5 The Hand That Rocked the Cradle**

* * *

_**I-74 W**_

Dean stared at the road, acutely aware of the silence that filled the car like syrup, pressing against his ears. In the back seat, Kevin sat slumped, staring morosely out the window. Beside him, Sam was hunched into the corner, face resting against the glass. He couldn't see if his brother's eyes were open or shut.

He could understand Kevin's position, although he thought that the guy was taking the loss a little harder than was strictly speaking necessary. But Sam … Sam knew what was at stake here, this was the brass-ring, the thing that would change their lives, change the fucking world. His brother should have been hopped up, crackling with energy, ready to fight to the death for the chance to end a nightmare that had held them both.

His fingers twitched against the leather wheel under his hands, itched to put a tape in, something primal and wild and at max volume. They itched to feel the smooth bone shaft of the weapon that lay in the trunk, ugly and unbalanced and made to take life with one long stroke. They itched to close up tight into fists and feel the satisfying crunch of bone on bone. He stared out through the windshield, unaware that he was trembling, very slightly.

* * *

_**Galesburg, Illinois**_

The diner had an outdoor area, and Dean had made a beeline for it straight away. He couldn't help it. He wanted a clear line of sight in every direction, and the air against his skin. The over-warm interiors of the places they'd been in the last few days made him uncomfortable.

He looked at the menu when the waitress brought it, barely glancing at her, not seeing his brother's brows wrinkle up and smooth out as Sam noticed that lack of attention. The menu was long. There were a lot of things in it. Steak sandwich. Burger with the lot. Toasted sandwiches. Soup. Salad. Pasta. Desserts. Beverages. Side orders. After a couple of minutes, he looked up, rubbing the heel of his hand against his temple. Burger. A burger would be okay.

He handed back the menu when she returned, giving his preference tersely and looking around again, at the cars that drove slowly by on the road beyond the parking lot, the people walking through the lush, green park on the other side of the deck, and those who were talking and eating and laughing at the small tables surrounding them. At the trees that were waving slightly in the breeze.

"Dean?" Sam looked at him, then turned to follow his eyeline, eyes narrowing as he saw the top of the tree moving lightly, the only thing he could be looking at. He turned back to his brother.

"Dean."

Dean looked at him, one brow lifted. "What?"

"You okay?"

The scowl appeared immediately. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Sam sighed softly and looked at Kevin. The teenager was hunched up in his chair, staring at the table top, brows pulled together, something bubbling away in there.

"How long is this going to take?" Kevin looked at Dean, his face set.

Dean looked at him. "As long it takes. You got a hot date or something?"

"I want to go to Michigan," Kevin said, his voice low and stubbornly certain.

Sam looked at his brother. The waitress returned to the table holding a plate.

"Your burger, sir," she said brightly, setting down the plate on the table. Dean looked down at the burger, and picked up the bottle of ketchup. The waitress looked at Sam and Kevin. "Your orders will be along shortly, can I get you a drink?"

"No!" Kevin blurted out, then looked down at the table.

"Okay," she chirped, turning and walking away.

"What?" Dean picked up the burger and took a bite.

"I want to see my mom," Kevin said, looking up at him, his eyes hard.

"Are you kidding me? You're kidding me," Dean said around the mouthful, staring disbelieving at the teenager. Was it fucking essential to have these conversations while he was enjoying eating? Enjoying the one fucking thing he could actually enjoy?

"What?" Kevin demanded. "Is it too much to ask if we can swing by and check on my mom?"

""Swing by?" It's a day's drive in the opposite direction," he said, shooting a glance at Sam. "You know that, right?"

"Yes," Kevin agreed, voice tense with barely held control. "I understand we're in a hurry."

"Okay, well, then, what's the problem?" Dean leaned back with a half-shrug.

"Channing's broken neck is my problem!" Kevin snapped, his voice rising as his hands closed into tight fists on the table.

Dean looked away, eyes rolling. Back to the fucking girlfriend.

Kevin glanced around, remembering that they were in a public – and quiet – place. He modified the volume as he continued. "As in I'd rather not see my mom twisted into a corkscrew."

Sam watched them. Kevin was twisting himself into a corkscrew with his worries, and he could see that his brother knew it, just wasn't interested in easing the pressure. "Kid's got a point, Dean."

"Stay out of this," Dean said automatically, not looking at him. Sam smiled sourly at the brush-off. That, at least, was the old Dean.

"Kevin, your mom is fine," Dean said patiently to Kevin, putting his half-eaten food back on the plate.

The waitress came back and set Kevin's order on the table between them.

"How can you possibly know that?"

"Because Crowley needs her to be, okay?" He leaned forward over the table. "In fact, he's probably got the place stacked with bodyguards right now, protecting her so that when you do show up, they'll pounce on you both."

Kevin looked at him miserably. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

Dean glanced at Sam, rolling his eyes skyward. "She's bait, man, plain and simple. And you want to swim right up and bite the hook?"

Kevin looked away, the muscle at the point of his jaw jumping. Kid was going to start crying in a minute, Dean thought. He inhaled and looked around. It wasn't rocket science. They had the opportunity of a lifetime – of half a dozen lifetimes for that matter – he wasn't going to risk it. He needed this.

"Look, we have got Crowley by the short and curlies, okay? All we need to do is find the tablet, whip up the spell, and – boom! – sunshine and sandy beaches." He picked up the burger, and took another bite.

Kevin had already learned that the man sitting opposite him actually listened when emotion was left out of the conversation as much as possible. His fingernails drove into his palms under the table as he struggled to shut his feelings away.

"Dean, my mom's all alone. She's surrounded by demons," he looked at Dean's face, pausing a moment to let that sink in. "Can you really not understand why I want to make sure she's okay?"

Dean looked at him, chewing slowly. _Sure_, he thought sourly. _Go ahead. Play the mom card. Why not?_ He dragged in a deep breath and looked at Sam. Sam's brow wrinkled up unhelpfully. His brother didn't have to say anything out loud.

He looked back at Kevin. He wanted to talk about Hell, about demonkind and the curse they were on the human race. About what they did to people, how they tortured and tormented and drove their victims insane. What they'd done to his brother, to Bobby, to Lisa, to his mother and grandfather. Then the words were swept away by those memories that filled his mind and vanished, and it was too late. He knew he'd lost the argument before he'd begun.

"Son of a bitch." He slapped the rest of the burger back on the plate, and threw his hands up, scowling around the food still tucked into one cheek. "Fine. Let's go."

Kevin looked at him as he got up from the table, pushing his chair back. Dean stopped abruptly beside him, and leaned on the table.

"For the record, what we're doing is going to make it _more_ dangerous for her, you get that, right?"

Kevin nodded nervously, staring into the dark green eyes. Dean nodded once and walked off.

* * *

_**I-90 E**_

Sam drove, keeping the car at sixty-five, occasionally glancing sideways at his brother. Dean was curled awkwardly into the corner, sunglasses over his eyes, one shoulder hunched higher than the other, his posture expressing his disapproval of the side-trip eloquently.

In the back seat, Kevin sat behind him, forehead leaning on the glass, his face blank as he stared out at the passing scenery.

Something had changed Dean's mind, Sam knew. He was pretty familiar with every one of Dean's expressions and he'd seen the jaw set as Kevin had spoken, then seen the muscles relax, just for a second, before the scowl had kicked in. Some thought or feeling or memory, he thought. Something from their past that had reminded him that people loved, cared. His brother would never tell him – hell, even Dean pre-Purgatory would never have told him – but something had happened.

His brother was harder now, he could see it. Whatever had happened down there, it had made Dean's walls stronger, higher. Even his anger was held under control now, far more than it had ever been in the past. He slowed as the traffic ahead showed a sea of brake lights, and looked at Dean again, his attention sharpening as he saw the collar of his brother's jacket shivering, the motion clear against the pale upholstery of the seat back. He wasn't sleeping, he thought. Or if he was, he was already dreaming of something that had tensed him to the point where his nerves were humming like overstretched wire.

_Bloody. Messy. And what else_, Sam wondered? _What else?_

* * *

_**Neighbor, Michigan**_

The neighbourhood was postcard-perfect. Not a speck of litter desecrated the smooth black asphalt of the cul-de-sac to offend or trip up the pert blonde jogging past them or catch the nose of the pedigree Weinmarer being walked on the other side of the turnaround. The round garden barrier in the centre was green and pleasant, every plant pruned and trimmed, the dead flowers culled, quite possibly as soon as the first streak of brown appeared. Every house was immaculately painted, delightfully framed in established gardens, mature trees in the backyards, young, healthy trees glowing verdantly in the front.

The black car stood out sinisterly on the other side of the roundabout, a crow in a tropical bird enclosure, the three inside watching the blue house at the end of the street intently not suspicious-looking at all.

"Tiger mom, 9 o'clock," Sam said softly, holding the glasses against his eyes.

Kevin leaned forward and grabbed the binoculars from him, scanning the house front. "Where?"

"Left window," Sam said. Beside him, Dean's eyes moved over the house and the street steadily, pausing occasionally as something tugged at his instincts and observation confirmed it.

Through the binoculars, Kevin watched his mother stand by the window, looking outside, her body tense, as if she was waiting for someone, someone important.

He lowered the glasses slowly, relief flooding through him. "She seems okay."

He watched as she turned away from the windows and walked into the shadows of the room. "Sad. But okay."

"Check out the mailman," Dean said quietly.

Kevin raised the glasses again, looking at the mailman's face as he put letters into the box. "Yeah, that's Carl. So what?"

"Yeah, well, Carl's filled your mom's mailbox three times since we've been sitting here," Dean said dryly, eyes narrowed as he watched the mailman looking around.

Kevin lowered the glasses and looked at him. "He's a demon?"

"And see the gardener?"

Kevin lifted the glasses again, looking at the pony-tailed man dressed in a khaki shirt and pants, standing by the front path, hosing a brilliant clump of hydrangea, the water pouring through the grass and down the concrete.

"Think that plant needs any more water?"

Kevin let the binoculars drop, mouth tightening.

"We have to kill them," he said, looking at the house.

Dean's mouth curled up on one side. "Just check that she was okay, you said."

"I know but I can't leave her here like this!"

"They won't hurt her, Kevin. Crowley wants you." Dean looked down at the wheel. "We go in and stir things up, then she'll really be in danger. And so will you."

"I don't care, Dean. I can't leave here knowing those things are all around her," Kevin said tightly. "I'm not like you."

Sam looked at Dean's profile, watched his mouth tuck in slightly at the corner.

"No, you're not," he said, so softly that Sam barely heard the words.

Dean looked up, exhaling slowly. "All right. Let's do it."

* * *

Behind the house, Dean leaned against the wall and turned off the tap, unscrewing the hose end unhurriedly. He moved back beside the stairs, crouching out of sight. _And five, four, three, two … one_. The pony-tailed demon came around the corner of the house and unlatched the gate, looking down the stairs at the uncoupled hose and shaking his head. He walked down the steps and picked it up. Dean had the knife in his chest before he'd even thought to look around. The demon's scream gargled as the meatsuit lit up violently under the skin. Dean yanked the knife clear and shoved the body down the stairs, throwing a glance over his shoulder at his brother.

* * *

Dean stood eight feet from the back gate as the man opened the gate and walked through it. He smiled and lifted his hand in a friendly wave and Carl, who'd once been the neighbourhood's mailman before the black smoke had slipped through his living room vent, stared at him uncomprehendingly with black eyes. Sam burst out from beside the gate, Ruby's knife sliding into Carl's chest easily, the demon burning up as Sam let him fall. Dean looked down at the dead mailman.

_Must have been a lot of new recruits_, he thought. Neither demon had recognised him.

"Any others, you think?" Sam looked around the yard and the neighbouring houses.

"No idea," he said, shrugging. "It's been a year; Crowley might have just put these two on since it's a long-shot Kevin's going to be stupid enough to come back."

Sam made a face at his brother's sardonic tone. "If it'd been Bobby or Lisa, you'd have done the same thing, Dean."

Dean looked at him for a moment, then turned away without answering.

* * *

Kevin knocked on the door softly, aware of the men to either side of him, feeling more exposed standing on his own front porch than he had in months. His mother opened the door, her face lighting up, disbelief and joy mixed and taking her breath away.

"Hi, Mom."

"Oh! Kev– Kevin!" she squeaked, staring at him, taking a single tottering step toward him.

Kevin waited on the mat as Dean and Sam stepped out from behind the side-panels of the door, squirting bottles of holy water and borax over the woman in front of them.

"Ah! Oh!" Mrs Tran stumbled backward, staring from one to the other, hands raised helplessly as she felt the liquid run down her neck and arms, the strong chemical scent of the borax drowning out every other smell. "What ...?"

Dean looked at her reaction consideringly. "She's clean."

Kevin stepped across the threshold and put his arms his mother, hugging her tightly. She closed her eyes as she wrapped her arms around his neck, relief shuddering through her, bringing tears. Dean glanced past them into the house.

On the porch, Sam's eyes narrowed. "You smell that?"

Dean inhaled and they moved together, coming into the house and peeling to either side of the Trans, following the scent of sulphur through the rooms to the kitchen. Sam gripped the hilt of Ruby's knife in his jacket pocket as he came around the corner into the doorway, seeing the woman in front of him, her mouth opening wide and a thick streamer of charcoal smoke emerging.

_Do you know how to run a battle? You strike fast and you don't leave any survivors. So no one can go running to tell the boss!_

Ruby's voice echoed in his mind and he stepped forward, the words coming automatically and with increasing strength. "_Et secta diabolica, omnis congregatio, omnis legio, omnis incursion –_"

The ribbon of smoke was sucked back inside the human vessel, twisting against the implacable pull of the spell, "_–infernalis adversarii, omnis spiritus exorcizamus!"_

The demon looked at him, eyes black. Sam felt his brother brush by and take the knife from him, as Kevin caught hold of his mother, holding her back against the cabinets. Dean thrust the knife blade into the woman and the demon inside coruscated in hell-hues as he kept his grip on her.

Behind them, Kevin and Mrs Tran stared, transfixed at the sight of the woman screaming as the demon was burned up. Dean pushed her off the blade, and she fell to the floor.

"Eunis!" Mrs Tran pulled free from her son's hold, staring down at her dead friend's body.

Dean looked down at the body. "That's not Eunis."

He glanced at Sam, wondering why – and how – his brother had decided to keep the demon in the body instead of letting it go.

"Come on, Mom, you need to hear what they've got to say – what I've got to say." Kevin pushed his mother out of the kitchen, turning her away as she tried to look back.

Dean took a step toward the door, then stopped, looking back at Sam. "How'd you do that – reverse exorcism thing?"

Sam blinked, lifting a shoulder. "Just said the verse backwards."

"_Why'd_ you do it?"

Sam looked at him for a moment. "You would've."

"Yeah," Dean nodded slowly. "I would've, stop the demon from telling Crowley what was going on, but why'd you do it?"

"Same reason, Dean." He looked back at the body. "She didn't deserve to have a demon living inside of her, no argument. She didn't deserve to be knifed by you to stop it either. But we're in a war and we can't afford to let Crowley know what we're doing."

Dean looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded. "Good."

Sam followed him out of the room.

* * *

The living room was small, but gracious and comfortable, decorated in muted earth shades. Sam and Dean took the armchairs, as Kevin settled his mother on the sofa and sat beside her.

"Mrs. Tran, your friend was possessed by a demon," Sam said, as gently as he could. He could feel his brother's impatience at the impromptu counselling session, even though Dean knew it was necessary.

"Have you ever seen _The Exorcist_?" Kevin asked his mother. She looked at him and heaved a sigh.

"Is that what you've been doing all year – watching television?" she asked him tartly. It wasn't much of a joke, but it was all she could come up with under the circumstances. The image of the dark-haired man sitting across from her plunging the knife into Eunis' chest rose again in her mind and her face scrunched up as she looked at him.

"Did you really have to kill her?"

Dean looked away briefly. _No lady, I could have let her live, _he thought acidly_, could have let the demon shoot back to the King of Hell and then we could've had all the demons out on this plane fighting us for possession of your son – how's that scenario strike you? That one rock your socks?_

He shunted the thoughts away and drew in a breath. "The demon would have warned Crowley where Kevin was if we didn't."

He was surprised to see her accept that explanation without further argument. He had the feeling that anything that involved the safety of her son would redraw the lines for Linda Tran, and conventional morality be damned.

Mrs Tran turned to her son. "And Crowley is the one who kidnapped you?"

Kevin nodded, wondering how much detail he needed to go into about the past year. _The less the better_, he decided. "Yeah. He needs me to translate his stupid tablet so he can take over the universe or something."

"Which is why we need to get it so that we can slam the gates of Hell forever with Crowley inside," Dean added, picking up on Kevin's sudden lapse into teen-speak.

"So that things like that don't ever happen again," Sam added, pointing in the direction of the kitchen.

Mrs Tran looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. Despite the fact they were all treating her as if she couldn't follow a decent plot, she understood why. Most people would have been curled up in the foetal position under a chair at the sight of their friends stabbed by a stranger and lighting up like a lava lamp in front of them, at the ideas of demons and Hell and even a King of, taking a personal interest in them. Of course, she wasn't most people, and never had been.

She looked at Kevin. "Prophet of the Lord, huh? It does have a nice ring to it." The barest hint of a smile touched her mouth, then her face tightened as she shifted her gaze back to Dean. "I'll get packed."

She got up and started to walk out of the room. Dean and Sam got to their feet as well.

"We're going to need a safe house since Crowley's been to the cabin, so –" Dean murmured to Sam, when Mrs Tran stopped dead at the doorway, turning back to them.

She cut him off. "Safe house? I thought we were going to get the tablet."

"Uh, we are." Dean looked down at her. "You're taking a trip to a demon-free zone," he added indulgently.

"And risk letting Kevin fall into the hands of this Crowley again?" Mrs Tran asked disbelievingly, ignoring the man's condescension, her eyes narrowing a little. "I don't think so."

Sam saw Dean's back tense up and stepped to one side. "Ms. Tran, all due respect, Dean's right. Crowley – he's not just a killer. He trades in torment. And if he can find a way to separate your soul from you, he'll take that soul to Hell and – and roast it till there's nothing left but black smoke," he said honestly, hoping that the truth would make her think again. "Look, it's best if you let us handle this."

"I understand," Mrs Tran said quietly, looking down. "But it's not my soul I'm worried about. It's my son's."

She looked at Kevin for a moment, then faced Dean again, crossing her arms slowly over her chest in defiance of whatever they might come with up with. Dean ducked his head, wondering how upset Kevin would be if he knocked her out and put her in the trunk. _Probably fairly upset_, he decided. He looked at Kevin.

"Kevin, you want to back us up here? Came all the way down here to pull her out of the fire, and now she wants to jump right back in."

"Like I can tell her what to do?" Kevin stared back at him, wondering where the hell he'd gotten that idea.

Dean looked back at the diminutive woman standing in front of him. He'd _known_ this trip would turn out to be a pain in the ass. He just hadn't realised how much of one. Or that the pain would come in a five foot nothing package brimming with protective mommy attitude.

_What the fuck_. It didn't matter to him if she wanted to put herself in harm's way. So long as she followed orders, he could deal. He turned back to her, shrugging.

"All right, coming with us has conditions – uh, hex bags to stay off the bad guys' radar and uh …" He grinned a little at her. "You're gonna have to get inked up."

"Do what, now?" Kevin looked at him blankly.

"Yeah, uh..." Sam drew back the collar of his shirt to show them the anti-possession tattoo. "You, too, Kevin." He shifted his shirt back into place, and looked at Kevin, adding softly. "Keeps the demons out."

"Fine," Mrs Tran said lightly, her gaze unwavering.

"Really?" Dean smirked at her, sure she was bluffing, waiting for the list of medical reasons she couldn't actually go through with it.

"What?" Mrs Tran saw his disbelief in her in his face, her expression flattening into boredom. "Like it's my first tattoo?"

She turned on her heel and walked out of the room. Behind her Kevin stared dumbstruck. Dean's mouth curved up as he watched her leave, the tickle of amusement genuine for the first time in a while. He wouldn't go so far as to say he liked her, but she definitely had more backbone than a lot of the people he'd met.

* * *

_**The Inked Pig Tattoo, Coldwater, Michigan**_

The parlour was clean and bright, with comfortable leather recliners. Dean and Sam stood by the window, watching the Trans get their matching sets. For a kid who'd learned demon evasion and hunting from God, he sure had a low pain threshold, Dean thought. Kevin was twitching and sweating and whimpering non-stop. Beside him, Mrs Tran stared straight ahead, her face impassive and calm. She could've been having her nails done for all the reaction the needles got from her.

_Plenty of control_, Dean thought, hiding his amusement. That was good. She was going to need it.

"You smell it, Sammy?" he asked, feeling the tension rising through him again. Closing the gates – all the gates – had filled his mind for the past two days. Demons, be gone, and stay gone. Just leaving him with the monsters he'd been practising on for the past twelve months – monsters that took skill and strength and speed, but couldn't just call down magic on him (_couldn't drag him back to Hell_). Old-fashioned, blood-soaked, adrenalin-high hunting. He couldn't wait.

Sam frowned, looking at the Trans. "Burning flesh?"

"Revenge," Dean clarified. "So close."

Sam looked at him closely. Dean was under control, no question about that. But he was humming, the collar of his jacket trembling again, his eyes the vivid, brilliant green they seemed to turn when he was hyped.

"Dean, you been sleeping?"

"Yeah."

He hadn't looked at him, Sam thought. Dean couldn't lie for shit to his family.

* * *

_**Laramie, Wyoming**_

Dean parked the car in the lot. Kevin and Mrs Tran walked in through the front doors and took a seat on a bench next to the banks of lockers. Dean turned left and came in through the bus transfer doors at the one end of the building; Sam turned right and walked around to the street entrance on the other end.

Walking through the thin crowds, Dean wondered at the last few demons Crowley had sent. One of them had recognised him, the others had not. It could mean nothing, or it could be an advantage, he mused, his eyes tracking through the station, letting his instincts determine what they saw. Twice, said instincts had prickled as he scanned the moving mass of people, both times he'd slowed and realised he was looking at plain old human evil, nothing supernatural about the sexual predator lurking near the rest-rooms, or the cold-blooded murderer getting his ticket for a bus to nowhere. He'd blinked after seeing them, not sure how he'd known what they were.

He nodded to Kevin and Mrs Tran as he came up to them, his brother sauntering up from the other direction at the same time.

"So, place is clean, far as I can tell," Sam said, glancing around casually.

Kevin and his mother stood up, and he handed Dean a key, the bright yellow plastic tab on the end of it matching the keys in the lockers behind them.

Dean took it without a word, going to the locker it matched and opening it. The locker held a large soft bag.

"You hid the Word of God in a diaper bag?" Dean frowned and pulled it out.

"No," Kevin said, staring at the bag without recognition.

Searching through it, Dean's face hardened. He tossed the bag back into the locker and closed it, looking at Sam.

"Plan B?" Sam asked.

"Plan B."

* * *

The goddamned suit still felt uncomfortable, Dean thought, pulling at the collar absently as he looked at Jerry Redman, bus station guard. Redman stood with his hands tucked into his belt, weight squarely over both feet.

"Been nothing but trouble with these lockers. Got broke into damn near every day for a while. Could never figure out who it was till yesterday," Jerry said, looking from Dean to Sam.

"Oh, so you know who did it?" Sam asked, glancing at his brother.

"Sure. Was Clem Smedley, a guy who worked the desk before me." Jerry nodded readily.

"Please tell me he's down at County right now." Dean looked at him.

"Yep, waiting for arraignment."

"Thanks," Sam said over his shoulder as they turned away. It was better than their usual luck in finding a petty thief, he thought.

* * *

The interview room smelled of cigarettes, fear and old sweat. The cinder block walls were pale grey. The door and one-way window frame a deeper charcoal colour. The single table in the centre was a government special issue, timber frame and a heavy plastic-coated top, the same dark grey as the door, the smooth top easy to get blood off, Dean thought as he looked at it.

Sam sat at the end of the table. Clem Smedley, a small-time criminal who looked completely at home in his oranges, sat midway down the long side, leaning on his elbows, a knowing smirk apparently glued to his face. Along the wall, Dean was pacing slowly, hands in his pockets. Sam didn't look at him. He didn't need to. His brother was radiating impatience like a defective reactor.

"Should have known they'd plant a LoJack in one of them bags," Clem said, with the ungrudging admiration for a cleverer opponent that someone who'd spent a lot of time in the system often had. "Sharp guy, that Jerry. He'll be a fine replacement for me."

"Right," Sam said, looking up as Dean paused on the other side of the table. "Well, in one of those lockers, there was a tablet. Do you know where it is?"

Clem looked at him, grinning slyly. "Can I even acknowledge that without my lawyer here?"

"Uh … look, I'm sure we can work out a little, uh, something-something with the locals if you just cooperate."

"What kind of something-something you got in mind, Agent?"

Dean stared at the man's face. The guy was a rat. One of the sewer rats that crept along the edges of any society, every society, and fed off the droppings from the tables of others. No loyalty to anyone but himself. No feelings for anyone but himself. You couldn't appeal to a rat. You could scare one though.

"Leniency?"

He heard Sam's voice distantly as he considered the possibilities he had here. There was no one behind the mirrored window opposite. The guard who'd brought Smedley in had worn a harried look and had muttered something about a coffee break as he'd closed the door behind him.

"So, here's what I'm thinking – full immunity from all charges," Clem said, amusement threading his voice as he looked at Sam. "Both past, present, and future."

Dean loosened his tie and walked around the table behind him.

Sam was over it. He recognised bleakly that he could have spent his life dealing with this very same crap if he had in fact made it through law school. The thought was not helpful. He rubbed his temple, turning away from the smug countenance of the man sitting across from him, not even a man, he thought tiredly. Just another rat.

His head snapped back around as Dean's tie flew into his peripheral vision, wrapping around Smedley's neck, and he watched in disbelief as his brother dragged the smaller man backward out of the chair, slamming him against the wall beside the window. Dean was holding Smedley tightly, and his knife appeared in his hand, the razor-edged blade drawing a line of blood from Smedley's neck as Dean pressed against it.

"Hey!" Sam banged on the table, his heart in his throat, not sure that his brother could actually hear him. "Dean. Come on."

"You feel that?" Dean asked Smedley, oblivious to Sam, the room, the guards and police who could have been (_but weren't, Sam had heard the guard's comment too_) watching from the room behind the mirror.

"Hey!" Sam pushed back the chair, getting to his feet, as he saw his brother's mouth curving into a frightening smile, the knuckles standing out white where he held the tie. "Dean!"

"Pawn shop," Smedley said, staring into chilling dark eyes, feeing the fist holding the tie turn, twisting the material more tightly around his neck, the serrated edge of the blade push its points into his skin. "First and Main."

"Dean?" Sam saw the smile disappear. Dean looked down into Smedley's face, his expression contemptuous as he released his grip on the tie, the knife vanishing away again. He yanked the end of the tie from around the smaller man's neck and stepped back.

Smedley remained pressed against the wall as Dean walked toward his brother, rolling up the tie and putting it into his pocket. The small-time criminal had been in and out of jail his whole life, had seen the seamy side of most of the major cities in the country … he'd never seen anyone who'd wanted to kill him as much as the man who'd just faced him had wanted to. In the dark green eyes he'd looked at Death and it had been panting for him.

"Come on," Sam said, opening the door and heading out. His heart was beating too fast, and he could feel sweat trickling down his neck into the collar of his shirt. He walked fast down the hall, nodding at the guards they passed, hearing Dean's footfalls behind him. He pushed open the building's access door to the parking lot, his feet stuttering down the short flight of steps, and he gulped in a deep breath, turning to look at his brother.

"What the hell was that!?"

"What?" Dean frowned, looking at him from the bottom step. "We needed the information. We got it."

"You wanted to kill him, Dean. I saw it."

His brother's slight one-sided smile sent a shiver up his spine as he looked at it. It lifted one side of the mobile mouth, but got nowhere near Dean's eyes.

"Guy was a bottom-feeder, Sam," Dean shrugged. "I might've wanted to, but I didn't."

He stepped past Sam and walked unhurriedly to the Impala, pulling out his keys and unlocking the driver's side door, looking back over the hood.

"You coming?"

Sam turned around slowly. He knew what he'd seen; Dean couldn't pretend that hadn't happened. He didn't what to think about it. He could still feel the sense memory of his stomach lurching when he'd thought Dean was just going to slice open the guy's throat. He walked toward the car and got in.

"Relax, Sammy," Dean said, starting the engine and twisting around to look out the back window as he reversed out of the space.

_Relax_, Sam thought hopelessly, his gaze shifting to his brother's profile. In the open neck of Dean's shirt, he could see the pulse beating in the hollow of his throat. It was beating very fast.

* * *

Dean pulled in behind the lipstick-red Ferrari Spider, parked outside the pawnshop, getting out. Sam got out the other side, and Kevin and Mrs Tran followed. Sam glanced at his brother as he came around the front of the black car, wondering uneasily how the next conversation would go down.

Following Dean around the front of the Impala, Kevin looked appreciatively at the Spider. "Whoa."

"Hey," Mrs Tran reproved, gesturing to him as she followed the men into the store. She stopped just inside the entrance, her hand staying Kevin's attempt to move closer to Dean and Sam. They were blocking the front door and that was the idea.

Sam pulled out his badge as he walked up to the clerk behind the glass display counter. Lyle Connor was lounging back in his chair, reading a magazine, sneakers crossed and resting on the countertop.

"Hello, sir. Agents Neil and Sixx, FBI," he said pleasantly, holding up his ID. "Uh, we're looking for a tablet."

"About, uh, yea big …," Dean added, showing the size of the tablet roughly with his hands. "Got some hieroglyphic crap on it."

"Sold to you by a local thief, first name Clem," Sam looked down at him. "Ring a bell?"

"Nope," Lyle said unconcernedly.

"Hey … Lyle." Dean looked down at the name tag on the guy's shirt. "I've had a really, really bad day today, so I'm not in the mood. If you want to do this the rough way, I am happy to oblige." His short-lived smile didn't reach his eyes. Sam looked at his hand, resting on the glass counter and saw the fingers draw up a little.

"Sure. We can do it that way," Lyle said, looking behind him and then along the wall to the front of the store. "If you want to get famous."

Sam and Dean followed his gaze, seeing the security cameras mounted at the rear and front. Dean's hand curled up a little then relaxed, fingers tapping lightly on the glass.

"That your car outside?" Mrs Tran asked, raising her voice.

Lyle looked at her insolently. "What's it to you, mail-order?"

"Hey!" Dean barked suddenly, slamming his palm on the counter. "Pal!"

Mrs Tran laughed softly as she walked up beside him. "I got it."

She looked at Lyle, her face a study in chill courtesy. "I notice you're driving with expired tags, maybe because you just acquired it in a trade, and I'm guessing that means you haven't registered it yet, which means you haven't paid the tax. Is that correct?"

Lyle got to his feet slowly, staring at her uncomfortably. "None of your business."

"Kevin, average blue book on a 2010 Ferrari F430 Spider?" She cut her gaze to the right, not turning.

"Two hundred and seventeen thousand," Kevin rattled off immediately.

"And the five percent Wyoming tax?" she asked, her voice softening as she looked back at Lyle.

"Ten thousand, eight hundred and fifty," Sam said instantly, getting a raised brow from his brother and a matching look from the woman in front of him.

"Ten thousand dollars," she said happily. "Something tells me you're the type who might balk at a tax bill that big."

Lyle looked at Sam in confusion, his earlier confidence scattered by the certainty in the tiny woman standing in his store. "W-what is this, an FBI audit?"

"No. But my brother, who _happens_ to work for the Wyoming tax assessor's office could arrange that if he thought something untoward was happening here," Mrs Tran said smoothly. She paused to let the clerk see the trap she'd wound around him. "So what's it going to be – the tablet or that piece of Euro trash crap you call a car?"

Lyle looked at her, then back to Sam and Dean, unsure of how he'd gotten from there to here in such a short time. Dean felt the twitchiness in his nerves dissolve and disappear as he watched the clerk's bewilderment. Kevin's mother was providing more entertainment the longer she was around, he thought, the slight smile on his face definitely reaching his eyes this time.

* * *

In the warm afternoon sunshine, the motel was very green, Dean noted as he pulled into the lot. He wasn't sure he could deal with a motel that colour, considering the way the day had gone so far, and he was glad that he didn't have to see – or sleep in, or fail to sleep in – the interiors.

The parking lot wasn't full and the room was easy enough to find. They got out of the car and he and Sam walked to the door, Kevin and his mother remaining close by the Impala. Sam knocked on the door, listening to the silence inside. He tried again, finally turning to his brother.

"Sure this is the right place?"

"It's what the pawn slip says," Dean said, gesturing at the number on the door. They looked around.

"Kevin?"

The voice came from behind, and all four turned around to see a well-dressed man standing behind them, felted top hat, pin-striped suit, and cane in matching shades of pale grey, the delicately pale pink shirt set off by a tie and silk handkerchief of fuchsia and violet.

Dean walked toward him, automatically moving to flank Mrs Tran and Kevin. "Who wants to know?"

"Oh, relax, Dean, I'm not going to steal your prophet." He looked at Dean dryly, acknowledging Dean's narrowed eyes with a lift of his brow. He looked back at Mrs Tran.

"Ah, and you must be Kevin's mother," he said, taking a few steps toward her, his glance cutting aside to Dean for a second. "Beau. And it is my absolute pleasure." He reached for her hand, lifting it to his lips. Mrs Tran hid an uncertain smile at the old-fashioned gesture.

He took a step back with a slight smirk in Dean's direction. "And Kevin. Imagine my luck. Here I was, working so hard looking for you that I never stopped to think you might be looking for me. I have something for you." He reached for his coat pocket, slowing down as Sam and Dean both straightened, their hands disappearing into their jackets.

"What is it?" Dean asked brusquely.

"An invitation, dear man," he said to Dean, drawing out the envelope with two fingers and holding it up. He looked back to Kevin. "To a very exclusive auction."

"Let me guess – where you'll be selling the tablet," Dean said sardonically.

Beau looked at him wryly. "Well, when we acquire an item as hot as the Word of God, it's smart to unload it as fast as possible." He looked back at Kevin. "And we are in such desperate need of a headliner for tonight's gala."

Mrs Tran moved in front of her son instinctively, hearing the thinly veiled thread of avarice in the man's voice as he stared at Kevin.

"Well, I hope you have three extra tickets to your little eBay party, 'cause the Prophet's with us," Dean said, dragging Beau's attention back to himself. He'd seen Kevin's mother's movement and felt the man's greedy attention on Kevin. How many others would want the scrawny kid when the word got around, he wondered bleakly.

Beau looked at him witheringly. "Oh, if you're worried about the safety of the prophet, rest assured that we have a strict "no casting, no cursing, no supernaturally flicking-the-two-of-you-against-the-wall-just-for-the-fun-of-it" policy."

"Is that right?" Sam looked at him expressionlessly. "How'd you manage that?"

Beau sniffed disdainfully. "Well, I am the right hand of a god, after all – Plutus, specifically."

Dean smiled. "The god of greed? Didn't see that coming at all."

Beau looked at him sourly. "My liege has warded these premises against Hell, Heaven, and beyond. Quite necessary with some of the players we see," he added confidingly. "And incidentally, quite possibly the safest place your precious prophet could be."

Neither Winchester moved or reacted to the assertion, and Beau let out a small sigh. The old days had been so much more fun.

"Well, since time is of the essence, perhaps I'll just go ahead and add a plus-three to the Prophet's invitation. Copacetic?"

He threw the envelope in the air and vanished.

"Well, thank you, Mr. Peanut!" Dean growled as he scanned the empty lot. Mrs Tran picked up the envelope and he turned back to her, looking at the white rectangle unhappily. Invitations to an auction. Where the thing they needed was up for sale.

"All right. What do we have to bid?" He tried to think of what they actually had right at that moment. It wasn't a long list. He looked at his brother. "What? We can't just show up there empty-handed."

"Dean, all we have to our names is a few hacked gold cards," Sam said, looking at him.

"All right. Well, then, we're gonna have to get creative," he said, staring at the ground. Creative. Huh.

"Huh," Sam looked at the Impala. Dean looked up at the speculation in his voice. "Well ..."

He turned and followed Sam's gaze, eyes widening slightly as he realised what his brother was considering. He still didn't feel exactly the way he'd used to about her, but the same could be said for sleep. Or sex. Didn't mean it wasn't all going to come flooding back … one day.

"No." He shook his head, striding across to the car and standing in front of her. "Mnh-mnh. Say it and I will kill you, your children, and your grandchildren."

"Okay, okay," Sam raised his hands placatingly, fishing around for another solution. Any other solution. Anything. "Uh ... wait a second. They – these auctions – they display the items to the bidders beforehand, right?

"Yeah, so?" He wasn't going to give his brother a free pass, not after the last idea.

"So all we got to do is get Kevin close enough to memorize the spell," Sam said, looking at Kevin.

Dean considered the plan. It would depend on whether or not Kevin could actually do that. "What do you think, brainiac? Think you can swing it?"

Kevin looked uncertainly from Sam to Dean. "I don't know. I've always had the tablet in my hands … before. Just looking at it … I don't know."

Dean chewed on the corner of his lip, then looked up at Sam. "Only game in town, though, right?"

"Only game anywhere," Sam agreed quietly.

"In high school, you memorised four chapters of Calc theory the night before the exam," Mrs Tran reminded her son.

Kevin smiled a little ruefully. "Didn't think you knew about that."

She smiled, then looked at Dean and Sam. "We've got the invitations. We've got no money. This isn't a brain-teaser."

_Tough little cookie_, Dean thought, looking at her and nodding.

* * *

The neighbourhood was, in the immortal words of Dan Ackroyd, a de-militarised zone, Sam thought, as Dean pulled over next to the narrow alley. On one side of the alley, a three-storey warehouse towered over the street. On the other, a brick apartment building offered a completely blank wall. They walked down single-file, looking for the neon-bright tags that the invitation claimed would be there.

"There," Kevin pointed ahead and to the right, a pair of archaic-looking symbols spray-painted onto the double side-doors in the warehouse's wall, brilliantly visible in fluorescent yellow.

Sam knocked and a tall, heavily-built man in a black suit opened the door, standing back to let them in. Directly in front of the doors stood a metal detector, a pair of red lights on the lintel showing that it was active. Kevin walked through it, and it gave a single beep. Sam, following, got the same, as did Mrs Tran. Behind her, Dean looked unhappily at the detector, hesitating in front of it, then finally walking through, hunched against the multitude of beeps that sounded with his entry, the red lights flashing furiously above him.

Three feet away, Sam made a face at him. He gave his brother a had-to-try look and waited by the table.

"Now, now, Dean. The system only works when everyone participates." Beau stood on the other side of the table. He waved his hand and a metal box appeared on the table in front of him. "Unload and don't take too long, we're on a schedule here, you know."

Sam turned away after the third knife went into the box, following the flasks of holy water, bags of iron nails, guns, grenades, what seemed to be an adjustable wrench and a number of other assorted weapons which had already filled the box to the halfway mark. Beside him, Kevin had also turned away, distancing himself. Mrs Tran continued to watch, fascinated by the number and variety of things Dean had drawn out from his clothing.

"How'd he walk from the car without clanking?" she whispered curiously to her son.

Dean slapped the Colt automatic on top of the pile and pulled a long, serrated knife from his belt, tucking it next to the ivory-handled gun.

"I'll be back for this," he said to the black-suited man who picked up the box and staggered away with it.

* * *

Beyond the entry point, the warehouse resembled a minimalist art gallery. Every window was covered with glowing symbols, the wards and guards and spells against mischief making in the building itself. The items for sale were displayed in glass cases, individually lit and containing a short screed about the item itself. They walked past cases containing Solomon's Eye, an elaborate golden device for seeing into other planes of existence; past the helmet of Pallas Athene and Excalibur, past the codex of Leonardo da Vinci, and Mjølner, the Hammer of Thor.

Dean looked from side to side uneasily at the people who browsed through the large open space. "How the hell are we supposed to know who's who?"

"It's pretty simple, Dean," Sam said, shrugging as he scanned the room. "They're all monsters."

Before he could come up with a comment about that, Dean saw what they were looking for. "Hey."

"Hey," he repeated as he walked to the glass case and looked at the tablet. The stone had been placed in a solid metal u-shaped holder, hiding both sides from view.

"Great," he said disgustedly.

Kevin looked at the tablet. "I guess we're not as original as we thought."

"It's okay. It's okay," Sam stared at the case, willing himself to think of something. "We just got to come up with a plan B."

"And what, pray tell, could possibly have been plan A?" Crowley drawled softly from behind them. Dean and Sam, Kevin and Mrs Tran turned around. The King of Hell stood there, the dark eyes watching them filled with a mixture of amusement and thoughtfulness.

"Bring the prophet to the most dangerous place on Earth, memorize the tablet, and then va – Moose?" He glanced at Sam with a half-smile. "Hello, boys."


	6. Chapter 6 An Unutterable Sacrifice

**Chapter 6 An Unutterable Sacrifice**

* * *

Dean looked at the demon coldly, his attention sharpened to a pin-point focus. Memory crowded up against the walls in his mind and he felt them bulge with the force. He could feel an ache spreading through his muscles and tendons and nerves, an ache to just kill the demon with his bare hands.

"Crowley." The single word dripped with contempt.

Crowley looked at him for a second and deliberately turned to Kevin, dismissing the elder Winchester. "Kevin. What a pleasure to see you."

He strolled toward them. "Sorry about your little … playdate. Ah ... uh, her … um name?" He gestured helplessly, looking at the ceiling. His gaze snapped back to Kevin. "Ah, well, if you're gonna make an omelet, sometimes you have to break some spines."

He looked down at Mrs Tran abruptly. "And who is this lovely young thing? Must be your sister."

Linda Tran stared up at him, her fury growing as she listened to his deliberate torment. His eyes flickered up for a fraction of a second, gauging Kevin's reaction, and her fist flashed out, the knuckles striking the side of Crowley's mouth with every bit of her eighty-pound weight behind it, the crack loud in the silence.

Crowley reeled away, lifting his hand to the reddened skin.

"Stay away from my son," she said through her teeth.

Sam had felt Dean twitch as Mrs Tran lashed out, both of them surprised by the power she'd packed into the hit, both surprised by the fury that laced her words. He swallowed as he looked at Crowley's expression. The demon stepped away from Kevin's mother as he turned slowly back.

"Charming," he said, his gaze shifting to Sam. "Defiling her corpse has just made number one on my to-do list."

Dean took a half-a-step forward, his eyes almost black with a rage that went far deeper, was far older and far hotter than Mrs Tran's. He stared at Crowley as Sam stepped forward to intercept him and Crowley moved away a little.

"Uh-uh-uh. Don't mind a little love tap, but anything more, and our mooky pals here may just throw you out, and that would be a shame," Crowley cautioned them, glancing over his shoulder at the auction's enforcers, positioned along the walls, looking at them impassively now.

"Dean. It's not worth it," Sam said, keeping them both in his peripheral vision. Sweat was trickling down the back of his neck. There were too many powder kegs in here, given what was at stake.

"Listen to Moose, squirrel," Crowley mocked, tensing slightly as he saw Dean's murderous expression.

The doors behind him opened and a large man with fine, white hair cut very short, came striding through them. He wore a black sweatsuit, enlivened by broad white stripes down the arms and legs, his eyes fixed on the podium at the end of the room, ignoring the invited guests.

"Ah. Here comes our host," Crowley said, turning to watch Plutus walk past.

A voice came over the sound system. "Honoured guests, please take your seats."

Crowley looked back at them, his mouth twisting up slightly. "Saved by the bell, boys. Aren't you lucky?"

"Gentlemen, the auction is starting." Beau slowed as he passed them, meeting Crowley's eyes for a second and extending his hand toward the seating ahead of him as his gaze moved to Sam and Dean.

"Good luck with the bidding," Crowley said derisively, walking away.

Kevin followed him, leaving a reasonable distance between them, and Sam and Mrs Tran began to walk after them.

"Nice right hook," Sam said, bending toward Mrs Tran and keeping his voice low. She glanced up at him, and laughed a little at the memory.

* * *

Dean looked at the glass case holding the Word of God. Chances were the case would be unbreakable, he told himself. It might look like glass and feel like glass, but he doubted very much it was, in fact, glass. And even if he could break it, there was nowhere to run in here, nowhere to hide. His weapons were sitting in a box somewhere. He had three hostages to fortune, sitting in a roomful of monsters. He turned away reluctantly.

He was distantly aware that the adrenalin that had flooded him when Mrs Tran had taken her clean swing at Crowley was only slowly leaching away now. His liking for Kevin's mother had risen dramatically with that one action, even if it hadn't been the smart thing to do.

"Dean Winchester?"

Dean slowed and turned to look at the teenager in a red-and-white fast food outlet's uniform standing to his right.

"Do I know you?" he asked.

"Uh, no," the young man admitted. "But, uh, I knew Castiel."

Dean looked at him, glancing down the room to the auction seating and back to him. "You're an angel?"

The angel nodded. "This – this was the nearest vessel on short notice," he explained uncomfortably. "We don't usually come to things like this, but, uh …"

Dean cut him off. "You're chasing the magic rock?"

"We protect the word of God," the angel corrected him.

"Well, awesome job so far, uh ..." He glanced down at the name tag attached above the shirt pocket of the uniform. "Alfie."

The angel glanced down at the shirt. "Actually, my name is Samandriel."

"Let's just stick with Alfie," Dean suggested in a tone that indicated he would never call the angel anything other than Alfie, even under torture.

_The man was much as others had described him_, Samandriel thought. "I wanted to ask you about Castiel. What happened to him?"

_Reduce it down to twenty five words or less_, Dean wondered, looking aside. He didn't want to tell the angel standing in front of him what had happened. Didn't want to think about it, didn't want to revisit the memories.

He glanced back at Samandriel, and sighed inwardly as he saw the raw need in the vessel's eyes. Maybe Cas' friends had the right to know, he thought.

"Well, me and Cas – we, uh – we iced Dick Roman and got a one-way rocket ride to Purgatory for our trouble," he said uncomfortably.

"But you escaped," Samandriel said hopefully, the blue-green eyes searching his face for something – Dean wasn't sure what the angel was looking for. Wasn't sure he could give it to him even if he had it.

"Did – did Castiel?" Hope. Hope was what he'd been looking for.

Dean looked at him. He couldn't open his mouth. Couldn't say the words. Not to ease the angel's pain. Not to destroy his hope. Not to find the release he knew he needed for himself.

Samandriel looked at the struggle in the man's eyes and felt his hope for the wayward angel who'd been a friend, a good friend, go. Whatever had happened, Castiel had not returned from Purgatory. And the creatures that lived there … an angel glowed like the heart of a star in that place. Castiel could not have hidden, could not have stayed safe.

"You know," the angel said quietly. "There are some in Heaven who still believe, despite his mistakes, that Castiel's heart was always in the right place." Samandriel looked up at Dean.

"Are you one of them?" Dean asked brusquely.

"I think too much heart was always Castiel's problem."

Samandriel turned away, walking behind Dean and into the shadows.

He'd known – a part of him had known – from the moment they'd found him, down by the river, that Cas was looking for a chance to do penance, for a means to redemption, possibly, or eternal punishment. For what he'd done in Heaven and what he'd done on Earth. At the time … at the time, he thought he'd gotten through to the sonofabitch stubborn angel.

Memory filled him up and he pushed it away, pushed it down. It was too hard, too fucking hard to live up here in the world and be haunted by everything – everything that had happened. Everything he'd seen. Everything he'd done. He'd tried so goddamned hard for so goddamned long and he'd failed.

He pulled in a deep breath. Sooner or later, he was going to have to look at it again. In detail. He kept telling himself that once Hell was locked down, once they'd done this job, once people were safe from the demons … he'd have the time to do it. Or at least, he would if he didn't die in the meantime.

* * *

Beau tapped his cane against the floor. "Ladies, gentlemen, and...other, welcome to this once-in-a-lifetime event."

Dean walked down to the row of seats, hesitating next to Sam and making a gesture for Sam to move along. Sam ignored it, waving his hand insistently. Dean rolled his eyes slightly and stepped past, taking the seat next to him. On his other side, Mrs Tran sat like a statue, her attention on the man speaking at the front. Kevin was beside her, staring ahead with equal rigidity.

"For three thousand years, Plutus has been the first name in magical and alchemical esoterica."

Sam pulled out his wallet and bumped Dean's arm, waving his wallet to get Mrs Tran's and Kevin's attention as well. They emptied purses and billfolds, passing the total to Dean as Beau continued to extol the virtues of the business.

"Our prices may be high, but our quality is unmatched, and we stand by our products."

One row behind them, on the other side of the aisle, Crowley said quietly to Sam, "Don't know why you're so keen on that hunk of dirt. So it tells you how to blast back a few demons? I'll just make more. You ought to know how easily the human soul becomes black and fouled." Crowley shifted his gaze to them. "Both of you, actually."

Sam stiffened. "Yeah, we'll see."

Dean kept counting, and Sam hoped he'd missed Crowley's words.

"All right. So, how much we got for plan B?" He turned to Dean.

"Uh, well, we got our hacked credit cards, about two thousand dollars, and a, uh, Costco membership," Dean handed the card over to Sam apologetically.

At the front, Beau picked up a black velvet stand, holding a detailed and delicate pendant on a necklace. "Our first item, the amulet of Hesperus. Let's start the bidding with, um, three tons of dwarven gold?"

_Dwarven … gold?_ Dean leaned forward a little, uncertain that he'd heard that right. He looked at Sam who was hyperventilating a little as he stared up at Beau. Sam turned his head to look at his brother when the bidding when up.

"Ah. This lady. I have three. Do I have, uh, four? Ah. Four, gentlemen here. Four. Going for five. Five?" Beau looked around the room. "Five to this lady. Do we have an advance on five tons?"

"Plan C?" Sam said, looking down past Dean to the others.

"Big time," Dean said, staring at the floor.

"Any other bids? Any other bids?" Beau looked around the room.

"I'm gonna use the restroom," Dean said, getting up. He couldn't think in here where a necklace had just sold for five tons of dwarven gold. _What the fuck was dwarven gold?_

"Sold." Beau slammed his cane on the floor and put the Amulet of Hesperus onto another table.

Sam barely noticed his brother leaving, as he hunched up in the chair and put his head in his hands. _Dwarven gold_, he thought bitterly. _Of course, they could leave an IOU with Plutus, hop a plane to England, stage a heist on Gringcotts_ … he shook his head. They'd played a few fields that had been out of their league before this, and had somehow managed. He couldn't remember how, right at this minute, but he knew they'd done it.

* * *

Dean walked up the aisle slowly. _Magical items. Legendary treasures_. A bit out of their pay bracket. If he'd kept the amulet that Sam had given him, he could have bid that, he thought sourly. _The one and only God-early-detection-device_. He couldn't prove it worked – but then probably no one could, since it was the general consensus that God had taken an early mark and bugged out for parts unknown.

Ahead of him, the rumble of wheels dragged his attention back to the warehouse and he watched one of the god's attendants pushing a trolley with several items on it. _Well, if you can't do it legitimately_, he thought, _there was always the darkside_.

He followed the man with the cart out of the main room and up a wide hallway, ducking back behind the corner as the man turned and stopped at a thick, steel door at the end of a shorter corridor. Dean watched as the man unlocked the door and pushed the cart inside, coming back out and re-locking the door behind him. He backed up as he heard the man's footsteps coming toward him. Stepping forward with a full stride, he ran into the man, apologising and twisting around him, hands held out appeasingly. The other man looked at him contemptuously and walked away.

Dean stopped as the attendant turned the far corner, looking down at the key he'd lifted from him. He walked into the short hall and along to the steel door. The key fitted and turned, and he opened the door, not really believing that it was going to be this easy.

The room held a number of the auction's unsold artefacts. Including the tablet. It also held two dour-faced men, both of whom were staring at him.

Dean looked at them. "This isn't the men's room."

Neither of the men moved. Two against one, no weapons. Well, he had no weapons, he wasn't so sure that they were unarmed. For a second, the low-level tension in him, the hum that lived in his nervous system since he'd stepped through a brilliantly lit portal from another plane, flared up and he almost stepped into the room, willing to see if he could take them. _You'll die_, a voice said clearly in his mind. _And with you, any hope of closing Hell and locking Crowley away_.

"Okay," he said to the men, and closed the door.

He walked down to the intersection of the corridors and turned back to the auction room, stopping and leaning against the wall for a moment. Was that getting harder to keep under control, he wondered? He couldn't get a handle on the triggers. He looked down at his hands and closed them slowly into fists to hide the very faint tremble in them. _Use it, don't let it use you_, he thought uneasily and dragged in a deep breath. He was alright. He'd be fine.

He straightened up and walked down to the doors to the auction room.

* * *

"Our next item up for bid, the hammer of Thor, Mjølner," Beau gestured to the monstrous weapon, gleaming in its display case.

'A finger bone from the frost giant, Ymir," said the small man near the front, lifting a long, age-darkened bone from his bag and holding it up.

Sam turned to look at the man curiously.

Beau raised his brows, and turned to look at the god, who watched the proceedings from a chair to one side of the stage. Plutus shook his head. Beau looked back to the man.

"I'm sorry, Vili, that's not quite enough for this item," he said apologetically.

The younger brother of Odin shook his head and rummaged in the bag on the seat beside him. "Uh... the bone and, ah … five-eighths of a virgin," he said, holding up a paper bag that was leaking blood.

Sam recoiled as the bid sank in, face screwing up. Behind him he heard a door close.

Beau glanced back at Plutus who nodded. He turned to Vili and smiled.

"Ah. Sold."

Dean's hand slapped into his shoulder, and he looked up at his brother, his mind still idiotically circling the question – _which five of a possible eight were in the bag?_ – as he moved across and Dean sat down beside him.

"Plan C tanked," Dean muttered in a low voice.

"Our next lot, the Word of God …," Beau said, holding up the stone tablet and showing it to the room. "Capital "G". Very old, very rare."

Sam gathered up the combined loot he had, shifting as he prepared to get up.

Crowley stood up behind them. "Three billion dollars."

Dean and Sam turned together to look at him. "Whoa."

At the back of the room, Samandriel rose to his feet. "The Mona Lisa."

Crowley turned to look at him sourly and looked back at Beau. "The real Mona Lisa … where she's topless."

The angel kept his gaze fixed on Beau. "Vatican City."

"Alaska."

Beau shook his head. "Too hard to get to the oil."

"All right. The moon," Crowley said, looking at Plutus.

Dean shook his head as he looked around at the demon. "You're bidding the moon?"

Crowley glanced at him. "Yeah. Claimed it for Hell. Think a man named Buzz gets to go into space without making a deal?"

Beau looked disappointed. "Ah. I'm sorry, gentlemen. It seems that our reserve price has not been met. So in order to stimulate the bidding, we're going to add an item to this lot …Kevin Tran, Prophet of the Lord." He pointed to Kevin and the teenager disappeared.

Linda Tran felt her body turn to ice as her head snapped around to her son's empty chair. She was on her feet before she'd realised she'd moved.

"No!"

On the stage, beside the god, Kevin reappeared, handcuffed to a thick chain, holding him to the balustrade. Sam and Dean shot to their feet, and behind them the largest of the auction's enforcers placed a hand on each of their shoulders and forced them back down. _Goddamn double-crossing gods_, Dean fumed as he watched Kevin pulling at the chain.

Beau ignored the disturbance, looking around the room. "Mr. Tran is the only person on Earth who can read this tablet, which makes them a perfect matching set."

"So out of your league."

Dean scowled as he heard Crowley's mocking whisper behind him.

"So, do I hear a bid of, um –"

"No, stop! I'll give you whatever you want," Linda cried out. "I have a 401(K), my house –"

Plutus laughed quietly in his chair and Beau smiled pityingly.

"Good effort, Ms. Tran, but I'm afraid this is a little out of your price range," he told her.

Looking at him, she felt a moment of pure clarity. This is what it meant, she thought, time stretching out as if the clocks had stopped. This was the moment when the choice between self and responsibility became crystal clear, and there was no choice at all, only what had to be done.

"My soul," she said.

"Mom, don't!" Kevin shouted from the stage.

She looked at Beau, unable to look at her son. "I bid my soul!"

The room was silent. Sam sat in shock, his mind filled with a thousand memories of being alive – technically, physically alive – and feeling nothing, for anyone. Dean looked up at the small woman standing beside his brother, his mind ticking through the possible outcomes of a dozen scenarios of Mrs Tran's decision, ignoring the distant clamour and push of the part of him that he'd locked away, the part that couldn't believe what was happening. If she went through with it, it would solve all the current problems, probably introduce a few new ones, but they could deal with those when they came up, he thought clinically.

He looked at her. "Are you sure? That's a big move."

She didn't look at him, keeping her eyes fixed on the auctioneer.

On the stage, Plutus looked up and studied the woman. "Interesting."

"If it's souls that you're after, I can give you a million souls," Crowley said, looking at the god nervously. Only a bloody woman would pull such a scene-stealing stunt.

Dean looked around, twisting in his seat to face Samandriel. "Hey, flyboy, are you gonna get in on this?"

"We guard the souls in Heaven. We don't horse-trade them," the angel said, looking at him reprovingly.

Crowley hid a smile at the angel's piety, looking at the god. A million souls - somewhat twisted - against her one? No contest. "So we have a deal."

"It's not about the quantity, chief," Plutus said to Crowley, putting his paper down and leaning forward. He turned to Mrs Tran. "It's about the sacrifice."

"This little lady's soul is the most valuable thing she has. It's everything," he continued, his eyes dark with reverence as he studied the woman. He straightened up and turned his head to stare at Crowley. "Are you willing to offer _everything_, Mr. Crowley?"

Crowley broke free of the god's stare and looked down at the floor for a moment. _Everything_. Everything was Hell. All he'd struggled for. All he'd fought and bled and schemed for. And he was not. He lifted his head, catching Dean's gaze.

"Tick-tock," Dean said softly.

Crowley scowled, turning back to Plutus. "Fine. You win. I bid ... my own soul!"

Plutus burst into laughter, the sound echoing around the room as he leaned back in the chair. "Mr. Crowley, you don't have a soul."

Crowley dropped his head, ignoring the no-doubt smug expressions on the faces of the two men in the next row. It was true. He didn't. He had Hell, and that was all he wanted.

Plutus looked at Mrs Tran and smiled warmly. "Congrats, sweetheart."

"Thank you," Mrs Tran said shakily. "Thank you."

She could feel her knees trembling as it hit her. Thanking a god for taking her soul? She didn't regret it, she told herself. Didn't regret the decision or the consequences that would follow. There had been no choice. None at all. But she felt strange … and she needed to sit down.

Crowley turned away, brows drawn together as he left the room.

Sam flicked a look at his brother. Too much had happened in too short a time and he couldn't get his head around most of it. Dean looked … not shocked, he thought. Not surprised at all. _Maybe because he knows what it feels like to make a decision like that_, the small voice in his mind said quietly. _Because he knows what Kevin's mother is actually feeling_.

He closed his eyes. Even in the maelstrom of their lives, it seemed impossible that he could've forgotten that. And Dean had done it worse. Had known the fate that was waiting.

* * *

The room was empty, except for the three of them. Sam looked at Mrs Tran as she sat in front of him, watched the small expressions cross her face as she thought about the things she was afraid of. There was nothing he could do to help, to ease the fears or assuage them. His own memories filled his mind. He remembered killing … as easily and thoughtlessly as breathing. He remembered Dean, trying to explain about feelings, about grief and loss and the suffering of the soul. His brother had struggled to articulate the things he'd felt more passionately, more openly in that time than he'd done in the previous thirty years. He remembered looking at things and seeing them just as things, neither better nor worse than any other thing. He remembered thinking that there had to be more. He had been an efficient and effective hunter in that time. And it had all meant no more and no less than putting on a shoe.

"Losing my soul – is it going to hurt?" She stared at the floor, her eyes shining but her control holding, not a single tear escaping and rolling down her face.

Dean looked at her and nodded. "Probably."

"Will I die?"

"No," Sam said certainly. "You'll just wish you were dead."

"Okay," she whispered to herself, fingers tightening on her knees.

Sam swallowed and looked at his brother. _Wasn't this what we're supposed to be stopping_, he asked him silently. _Wasn't this the point of what we did – do?_

Dean shifted in his chair uncomfortably, feeling Sam's gaze on him.

_The job. Focus on the job_, he thought. They would have the tablet and Kevin. They could figure out a way to get her soul back after the job was done. They'd taken down gods before, wasn't so hard. But for right now, there was the job. Closing the gates. Closing Hell.

He looked up as Beau opened the door and came in, stopping a couple of paces in as he looked at them. "It's time."

Dean got up, and Sam slowly followed, looking down at her.

"You all right?" Dean asked, reluctantly because the question was one of the more stupid that had come out of his mouth. She wasn't all right and he knew she wasn't all right. _Why the fuck were there so many stupid things to say at times like these?_

Yeah," she said, answering as automatically as he'd asked. She looked up at them, and turned to look at Beau, standing behind her. "Can I – can I just have a minute?"

He inclined his head slightly, lips pursing at the show of emotion and walked out the door. Dean and Sam followed him.

"Dean, this sucks," Sam said, hesitating to look back at her. Dean glanced over his shoulder.

"Are you kidding me?" he murmured softly, turning back to the door. "We're about to close the gates of Hell forever. If you ask me, we got off cheap."

He walked out, and Sam followed him.

* * *

She heard the door close and stood up. _Get yourself under control. This is your decision and you will see it through to the end_, she told herself firmly. _You won't die. You'll get to see him live a long life, a happy life_. The thoughts didn't help as much as she needed them to, but she could breathe again. She turned to walk out of the room and a boy walked up to her, from the shadows on the other side of the room.

"Excuse me, miss. Hi. My name is Sam–," Samandriel stopped, thinking of Castiel's friend. "Alfie. I'm an angel."

Mrs Tran looked down at his uniform. "Who works at Wiener Hut?"

"No," Samandriel looked down as well. The next time he had to do this, he would at least change the vessel's clothing, he thought. "This is, uh – it doesn't matter. Uh, what you did in here was amazing, and I want you to know that my friends and I can protect your son. The Winchesters are exceptional men, but ... they're just men. If Kevin comes with us –"

"Oh, no, no," she stopped him, her face screwing up in apology. "The last time that angels tried to help my son, I watched them die. And Kevin went missing for a year. So, no offence, but … I'm gonna take my chances with them."

Samandriel looked at her and nodded in acceptance. He knew what had occurred when the Leviathan had come for Kevin.

He turned away and left the room and she watched him go. For some reason, the encounter had given her hope. She hadn't thought much of the two men in any real sense since she'd met them. Things had happened too fast. Too many things. Too many unbelievable things, she admitted to herself. But her instincts about people had served her well her entire life. And her instincts about them were strong. They were not like the angel, clear and pure and shining. They were … both … flawed and … broken, a little, she thought, turning toward the door. It didn't seem to matter. What was not broken, in either of them, was their purpose. Their _qi_. She smiled to herself. It had been a long time since she'd considered the principles of her grandmother's teachings. Nevertheless, that was what she felt.

If she was to lose her own _qi_, it would be good to be with two men who had such strength in theirs. They would protect Kevin; she knew that without ever having to be told it. Either would defend her son to death. And they would complete the task they'd set themselves. She knew that too. No matter what it took. So her sacrifice would not be in vain.

It was as good as she could hope for under the circumstances, she thought, straightening her back as her hand rested on the doorknob. It was good enough.

The hallway was empty when she opened the door. She walked through, looking around uncertainly. Footsteps echoed softly from the corridor to the left and she walked after them.

* * *

The main section of the warehouse was almost empty, most of the display cases empty and waiting to be packed away, the last items that had been successfully purchased waiting on the long table to one side.

Mrs Tran came into the room, escorted closely by Beau. She walked to where Dean and Sam were waiting, her face calm.

Plutus watched indulgently as Vili approached the table and picked up the weapon reverently, holding it against his chest.

"Good to see it going back to family, Vili," the god said gently. Vili looked at him and turned away, crooning to the hammer.

Dean looked around impatiently. "Where's the kid?"

Plutus looked over at him and snapped his fingers and Kevin appeared, his arms held by the god's guard.

"What are you going to do with her soul?" Sam asked Plutus abruptly.

"Whatever I want," the god answered, looking at him as he walking closer.

"I might sell it," he continued, looking down at her. "Or maybe I'll just tuck it away with my other precious objects, let them keep me warm at night. Mmm." His eyes narrowed as he smiled at her. She lifted her chin and straightened her back, staring back at him.

"Whenever you're ready, dear," he said, stopping in front of her and holding out his hands.

She filled her lungs and took a step forward, extending her arm toward the waiting god. Her jacket sleeve rode up and Dean's gaze sharpened on the mess of burns where the tattoo had been.

"Wait!" He stepped forward and grabbed her arm, pushing the sleeve higher, looking at Sam.

She turned her head to him, looking up into his eyes. "Hello, boys."

The voice that came out of her mouth was not her own.

"Crowley," Sam said, as her dark brown eyes flashed red, covering the socket from end to end.

"Surprise," she said, shoving at both, arms extended and hands held out. Both men were thrown against the opposite walls, dropping to the floor in clouds of plaster dust and splinters of broken furniture.

"No," Plutus said faintly, staring disbelievingly at her. "You can't. My warding spells."

"Your girl Friday," she said in her own voice, tilting her head to the man behind him, "showed me a few loopholes."

Plutus turned and looked at Beau. He smiled and shrugged. Plutus turned back to Crowley.

"And it all cost me was an island in the South Pacific. I love a bargain," she purred at him. Plutus looked down at her, rage filling him, and the room began to tremble with the force of it.

Crowley stepped back as Beau plunged the yew stake through the back and chest of the god. She reached out and gripped the end as the god shook and died, throwing it hard at the enforcer holding Kevin. He clutched at the end, dropping to the floor.

Crowley looked around and picked up the tablet from the table. "Can't do all my tricks, but I can do enough."

"Get out of her!" Kevin screamed. Crowley laughed.

"If I had a nickel for every time someone screamed that at me ...," she said, stepping toward him. Behind her, Dean rolled to his feet, pulling Ruby's knife from the box of weapons on the table beside him. She caught the movement in the corner of her eye and turned to look at him, and Sam launched himself from the wall, bringing her down in a brutal tackle, the Word of God skidding from her hands across the floor. She lifted her hand and closed her fist tightly and Sam moaned, drawing up his legs as pain filleted his organs.

Crowley rolled out from under him and scrambled up, sweeping up the stone tablet by the doorway.

Sam opened his eyes as the pain vanished, rolling to his feet to stand next to Dean, the two of them forming a barrier between the demon and the prophet.

"Getting in touch with your feminine side, huh, Crowley?" Dean looked at Mrs Tran steadily, the knife raised in front of him.

"Defiling the corpse, step one, more like it," Crowley smiled humourlessly at him. Sam's arm swung out as Kevin made a strangled noise and tried to get past him.

Dean shook his head slightly. "Well, come and get him."

Crowley considered him, glancing down at the stone. "One out of two ain't bad."

He turned suddenly and ran from the room, the diminishing sound of Mrs Tran's sensible heels clocking along the hall.

Dean swored and turned to Sam. "Watch the kid!"

He bolted from the room, apexing the doorway corner and accelerating as he caught the sound of the heels up ahead.

Kevin burst through the gap he'd left, and Sam swung around, one long arm reaching out, his hand catching hold of Kevin's jacket and holding him back. "Kevin, don't! Let Dean take care of it."

Kevin turned to look at him, and his eyes widened as he saw the god's assistant draw a gun from beneath his jacket. "Sam! Move!"

He thrust hard against Sam, ducking as the sound of the gunshot filled the room, ricocheting flatly around the hard walls. Sam ran doubled over as Beau tried repeatedly to shoot him, diving behind an upturned table and landing on his hands and knees, inches from the terrified expression of Vili, who still clutched Thor's hammer to his bosom.

Kevin broke from the wall, his heart thumping as he headed for the open door. Beau swung around, the barrel of the gun tracking the teenager along the wall.

"Don't!"

Kevin skidded to a stop, looking at the no-longer dapper man, into the small barrel of the gun on him.

"You know what's better than one private island? Two private islands!" Beau said, staring at him.

Behind him, Sam silently hefted the hammer, feeling for the balance and shifting his grip down the shaft slightly. He started to lift, and felt an electrical charge run from the massive head down to his hand, filling him with a blast of power. The hammer swung up on its own, curving and accelerating on its downwards trajectory like a juggernaut, the broad flat end striking the head of the god's attendant with the concussive boom of thunder, and lightning arcing and crackling from the weapon to Beau.

Kevin glanced from the body on the floor to Sam and ran out through the door.

Sam looked down at the dead man, feeling the charge dissipating in him, but his fingers felt welded to the metal, and as he flexed them, he could sense that the hammer was ready for more. A million images flowed through him, moving faster than he could process them, lands and waters of the north, ice and snow and a mountain towering above the clouds, a huge smoke-darkened hall filled with men and women, the fires roaring in the enormous hearths to either end, long, low ships with bellying sails, cresting gunmetal grey waters under the scudding clouds of a brewing storm … he stood still and felt them filling him, crowding out his own memories, pushing at him to let them in and take him over.

"Okay. Give it back." Vili stood in front of him, round lenses winking in the dim light of the room, outlined by the blue-white lightning bolts that still flickered around the hammer. "Give it back!"

Sam blinked rapidly as he tried to fight his way free of the images. He could see Vili standing there, one hand extended for the hammer. He'd only borrowed it, he remembered. _Just to kill Beau_.

The thought that hit him didn't seem to be his, and yet it was. He looked carefully at Odin's brother. "Where'd you get the five-eighths of a virgin?"

Vili smiled diffidently and lifted a shoulder nervously.

Sam stared at him and felt the charge rise from the hammer again, flooding him, blazing along his nervous system.

Vili's eyes widened dramatically as he watched the change in the man. "Oh, no."

Sam strode forward and Mjølner rose through the air. The room filled with the static and scent of a storm, briny and sharply bitter. When the hammer hit, thunder rumbled and shook the walls, and Sam's features were outlined and etched in blue-white light. He looked at the hammer and shouted out, head thrown back as the sound roared from his chest, his fingers opening one by one under the force of his will until the hammer dropped to the pile of clothing on the floor and he could breathe again, the visions and memories of the son of Odin gone from his mind.

* * *

Crowley cursed the shortness of his vessel's legs and the height of the heels she was wearing as he ran stiffly through the display room of the warehouse, the tablet tucked against his – _her_ – side. He didn't even see Winchester until he found himself slammed against the concrete column, feet dangling off the floor and Dean's thrice-damned demon knife inches from his neck. At least the bitch had decent upper-body strength, he thought, one small hand gripping the man's forearm like a talon and holding the edge of the blade off his precious person, the other flat against Dean's chest, keeping him just far enough away. The tablet had dropped, fallen to the floor somewhere and he couldn't spare the time or the energy to look for it.

"Mom!" Kevin skidded to a stop as he saw Dean leaning over his mother, the long, wickedly serrated knife blade at her throat. Dean flicked a glance at him, and that was all Crowley needed, that slight shift in weight and balance. He shoved Dean back and opened the stupid bitch's mouth, rushing out of her like a freight train.

Dean swore as he watched the King's reddish black smoke pour out of Mrs Tran and writhe and twist along the ceiling, plunging down the wall to disappear through the crack under the door. Back to his own vessel, he knew. One that he couldn't kill so easily, one that came with all the powers the demon had somehow managed to acquire when he'd become the ruler of the Underworld.

He stood and watched as the door opened and Crowley walked in, brushing off his tailored suit fastidiously.

"Well, that was exciting," the demon said mildly. "Good luck closing the gates to Hell without this." He bent and picked up the tablet, holding it up for emphasis.

Dean said nothing. There wasn't anything to say. He moved slightly and lifted the tip of the knife, and Crowley saw the warning clearly enough. Taking Kevin wouldn't be as easy.

The King of Hell shrugged inwardly. There were a lot of ways to achieve one's goals, if one had persistence and patience. He had both. He looked down at Kevin.

"Surprising what mommy dearest has rattling around in her head. Want to know who your real father is?"

Kevin looked at him doubtfully and glanced down at his mother.

"Scandalous."

"Crowley!" Dean snapped, lifting the knife a little higher.

Crowley looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then turned back to Kevin. "I know we're not mates, Kevin, but one word of advice – run. Run far and run fast."

He paused and looked at Dean, his eyes narrowing. "'Cause the Winchesters – well, they have a habit of using people up and watching them die bloody," he said maliciously, knowing that Dean, at least, would never deny it. He hadn't been party to the torture of Dean, back in the old days, but he'd heard enough to know where the buttons were, the fissures and weaknesses.

"Toodles." He waggled his fingers at Dean and turned around, walking out through the doors without turning back.

Dean watched him go, forcing the acrid taste of his need to kill the demon back down his throat. He hadn't lied, he thought. That was one up on Lucifer anyway. But Crowley had a gift for presenting things in the way that would hurt the worst. Sam would've protested. He couldn't. Couldn't deny that everyone they'd known, everyone who'd helped them, everyone … had died bloody and on their behalf.

He blinked as he felt the walls thin out and dragged in a deep breath, turning his back on Kevin and his mother, ducking his head as he sought the strength he needed to stay on track. It appeared in his mind, reassuring and hardening, an ugly, ill-weighted weapon, a long piece of stone, the edges chipped to razor keenness, bound with vines and plaited grass string to a thigh bone. He couldn't remember the first time he'd thought of it like this, reached out for something to dull the emotions, to still the rising panic. But it had been transmuted now in his head, the very image of it was a reminder and a well of power, a way to get whatever was trying to escape back down in the deeps and keep it locked away. Purgatory, he'd named it. And the image encompassed everything that he'd needed to remember about the place.

He heard Sam's footsteps and looked up as his brother walked into the room.

* * *

They'd lifted her into the chair. She would stay where she put, Sam realised. Motor skills were alright. He thought it was probably shock that was keeping her isolated, inside her mind. Her eyes were open and she stared at whatever was in front of her. They weren't responding to stimuli, he'd tried the flashlight earlier.

Kevin sat in front of her, his hand resting on her knee; hers were loosely curled on her lap.

"Has she said anything?" He looked down at Kevin. The boy shook his head slowly.

"Listen, Kev, what your mom went through – it's hell. Trust me, I know," Dean said quietly. "But she seems tough. She'll pull it together."

"You tried to kill her," Kevin said, staring at his feet, then slowing raising his head to look at him.

Dean nodded, and looked away from that accusing stare. "Kid, in this life –"

"Shut up!" Kevin snapped furiously at him, turning his head away. "I don't want to hear any more of your crappy speeches."

"I just want to talk to my mom," he said a moment later, more quietly. "Alone."

Dean glanced at his brother. Sam nodded. "Sure. Five minutes."

* * *

They walked into the display room, neither speaking. Dean leaned against a case at the far end of the room, tipping his head back for a moment to loosen the muscles of shoulder and neck. Sam closed the door behind them, moving away from it and walking over to his brother.

"Dean, were you really going to, uh ..." Sam's voice trailed away as he tried to think of the least brutal way to put it.

"What?" He looked at his brother blandly. "Slit her throat? Yeah, I was. I wish I had."

Sam looked at him, searching his face, the features so familiar, but the expression not. He couldn't see anything of the man he'd thought he'd known in that uninvolved expression. "Dean –"

"It was _Crowley_, Sam," Dean said, raising his voice slightly. "No matter what meat suit he's in, I should have knifed him."

Sam dropped his gaze. One more thing. One more thing that was different. What happened to saving people, he wanted to ask, but he didn't doubt that Dean would have an answer for that as well.

Dean looked at discomfort … and dismay … on Sam's face. He was losing him, he thought suddenly. Losing the one real anchor he still had. He couldn't keep him close without letting him in a little.

"I mean, yeah, it would have sucked, and I would have hated myself, but what's one more nightmare, right?"

He tried to lighten the comment with a mocking half-smile, and then gave up on it, the words way too close to the truth. It wasn't just Purgatory's screwing up of his sleep patterns or the tension that filled him whenever they were in one place anywhere for more than a couple of hours that made it impossible to get more than an hour's sleep at a time now. The nightmares had come back, the kind of horrific mish-mash that his subconscious seemed to revel in … he thought of the axe and pushed the mess back down again, away from here, away from now. It went unwillingly, and he turned his head to look at the doors.

"It seem a little quiet in there to you?"

They walked down to the auction room doors and Sam opened one, looking around the dimly lit, apparently empty room. "Kevin?"

He walked around the rows of chairs. "Kevin!"

"You've got to be kidding me!" Dean growled, looking around. The flash of white caught his eye and he walked to the chair that Mrs Tran had been sitting in, picking up the small note that lay on top of the seat. "Hey."

"What?" Sam turned around, looking at him as he walked back, unfolding the paper and reading it. "What's it say?"

"Uh, that they bolted, that we shouldn't come looking … and since we lost the tablet, Kevin figures we don't need him."

"Yeah, but Crowley still does. What's that kid thinking?!" Sam ground out, fear driving anger faster than he could control. _Goddamn idiot, he'd_ –

Dean looked down at the note. "He thinks people I don't need anymore – they end up dead."

For the first time since Dean had returned, Sam felt him again. Really felt him. Under the almost matter-of-fact tone of his voice, there was pain. And doubt. And his brother. He watched him turn away, looking blankly at the wall on the other side of the room. He saw the tightening in the small muscles of jaw and cheek and forehead as he struggled with something that had risen inside of him.

"Dean, that – that – that's not true. You know that," Sam said awkwardly. _God, where were the fucking right words when you needed them_. Over the last couple of weeks, he'd wondered if his brother had lost his soul down there, he'd been so completely unemotional and business-like about what had to be done. So unlike Dean. He'd been just the way he'd felt when he'd been flying soulless.

But that wasn't it. Dean – all of him – was somewhere in there, buried under whatever crap he'd had to deal with over the last year. He'd done it deliberately, Sam thought, done it to stop whatever memories and load he'd been forced to carry down there from breaking him up here.

The brother he'd had wasn't gone. Just … held down. And he didn't know how to help him. Or even if trying was such a good idea.


	7. Chapter 7 The More Things Change

**Chapter 7 The More Things Change**

* * *

_**I-80 E, Nebraska**_

Silence weighs more than gold, more than lead. It sucks life from the air and makes every thought a yell – or a scream – in the mind. The interior of the black car wasn't completely silent. Sam could hear the engine. He could hear the roar of the tyres over the road. He could hear the occasional rattle from the trunk when they ran over a seam or crack or divot in the highway's surface and the weapons shifted back there.

But between the two of them, the silence was like a wall. Unbreachable. Unscaleable. Thick and impenetrable.

Dean had brushed off his fumbling attempts to lessen the impact of Kevin's words, smiling derisively at the suggestion that there'd been any impact at all. Sam had watched the cracks papered over and seen his brother's shoulders and back stiffen as they'd gotten into the car, the knuckles white under the skin as Dean had gripped the steering wheel and gear shift. A tape went into the stereo, the volume went up and they'd driven back to the motel with _Rock Out_ pumping through the car, drawing stares from the street.

Over the last five days, they'd checked every point of exit from Laramie, flashing Kevin's yearbook photo around, and the surreptitious photo Dean had taken on his phone of Linda Tran, had even gone to the cops and reported them as missing, hoping to get a wider search going. They'd spiralled out along the roads, showing the photos at the diners and gas stations and truck stops along the highways and interstates. None of it had helped. Kevin and his mother had vanished effectively. The only good thing was that if they couldn't find them, probably Crowley wouldn't be having much luck either.

So they had nothing and Dean had started driving east this morning without saying a word. The stereo played the oldies but the volume remained bearable. Sam had the feeling that if he said anything – anything at all – it might go back up.

He looked out the window at the flat plains rolling by them. They hadn't been partners – hadn't been _brothers_ – for a lot longer than just a year, just the year gone by. Everything had piled up so heavily that he had no idea what they were now. Betrayals and lies, secrets and pain, sealed up and not looked at again. He'd felt like he'd gone through some of it, but he realised now that he'd barely scraped the surface. Too much had happened. None of it could be undone.

He shouldn't even be here, he thought morosely, hunching deeper into the corner. He had a chance to do something different. Something that would save him.

He glanced at Dean's stony profile and wondered how long it would take before he saw the pointlessness of trying as well.

* * *

_**Lincoln, Nebraska**_

The market wasn't crowded, despite the sunshine and blue skies, and Sam picked up a bag, browsing the stalls as they walked slowly through, picking up fruit and vegetables. He picked up an apple and bit into it, slurping back the juice as it ran over his lip.

They'd pulled into Lincoln just after midday and Dean hadn't made a fuss when he'd asked him to stop, just parked and followed him through the stalls, his attention glued to his phone screen.

It wasn't a truce, exactly, Sam knew. Dean was done wrapping up his latest load and shoving it to the back of his mind, and he was humming again, the hunter back to the fore, not really paying attention to him or what he did or said.

"Guy goes to Purgatory for a year, all hell breaks loose. Check this out. A jogger in Minneapolis gets his heart ripped out," Dean said suddenly, staring at the phone.

Sam glanced at him. "I'm guessing literally?"

"Only way that interests me," Dean agreed absently, scrolling down the web page.

Sam picked out a half a dozen tomatoes, putting them into the bag.

"And then, there's another article from six months ago. Same thing happens, also in Minneapolis. What does that tell us?"

"Stay out of Minneapolis," Sam said sourly, pulling out a wad of notes.

"Two hearts ganked, same city, six months apart," Dean continued, oblivious to the comment.

Sam stopped at the till and paid for his produce, listening to his brother talking on behind him. He didn't want to be here, he thought. Didn't want the worry, didn't want the life. Dean was skating along the edge of something, he knew that, but he couldn't see how deep it went, and he couldn't get him to talk about it at all. Every attempt had resulted in a neutral expression and a one-sided smile that hadn't gone near his eyes. He wasn't interested.

And Sam wasn't interested in hunting. So, where'd that leave them?

"I mean, that's got to be a ritual, man," Dean looked at him, almost oscillating on the spot. "Or at least some sort of a heart-sucking-possessed-satanic-crack-whore-bat."

Sam frowned and looked at him. "A what?"

"It's a case," Dean said patiently. "Look, I say we hang out the shingle again and ride."

"We're on a case, Dean," Sam corrected him through a mouthful of apple. "Kevin and the demon tablet need to be found, so heart guy takes a number."

"Uh, we just spent a week chasing our asses trying to lock Kevin down, okay?" Dean said. "And look at us. We're –"

He stopped and looked around the market, confusion filling his face. "Where the hell are we?"

"Farmers' market," Sam replied slowly. He held up his apple. "Fresh food."

Dean looked from the apple to his brother's face, his expression equal measures of doubt and disparagement.

"What?" Sam felt his defences rising. "I had a year off. I took the time to enjoy the good things."

"While avoiding doing what we actually do."

"Wow," Sam looked away, exhaling sharply. "Dean, does it make you feel that much better every time you say it?"

"All right, man," Dean said, smiling but not looking at him. "Look, I get it. You took a year off to do yoga and play the lute, whatever, but I'm back. Okay? We're back, which means that we walk and kill monsters at the same time."

Sam felt himself hardening inside again. Dean knew exactly how to push his buttons and he didn't need that shit, didn't need to feel like a five year old every goddamned time there was any dispute between them. His brother didn't need him, didn't need him to be around, complaining about hunting. Dean loved it. He could go do it on his own.

"We'll find Kevin," Dean continued, the mockery fading from his voice. "But in the meantime, do we ignore stuff like this? Or are innocent people supposed to die so that you can shop for produce?"

And there it was. _Again_. John Winchester, risen from his grave – or pyre – or whatever. Twisting everything he'd done to make it seem worse than trivial, a series of self-indulgent fancies that by their very nature were endangering people every day. He'd never learned to argue against his father, and he found himself trapped by the way Dean was twisting everything now. How was it so goddamned bad to want to eat decent food instead of the swill his brother insisted on forcing on them at every greasy spoon along the major arteries of the country? No one had died because he wanted fresh tomatoes every once in a while. He shut down the train of thought and looked away, not missing the slight, smug smile that flashed over his brother's face.

He wanted to tell Dean that wanting a normal life wasn't a sin. It wasn't lining people up against the wall and machine-gunning them to death. He wanted to throw in Dean's face that _he'd_ got to have a normal life, even if he'd been too conditioned and too goddamned obsessive to enjoy it. He couldn't say any of it. Not here, in a public place, where the anger would get out of control on both sides because there was too much in their past that had been held back and held in and had festered for too long. Not now, while they still had to work together to find Kevin and get the tablet and close the gates to Hell. He swallowed the masticated apple in his mouth hard and followed his brother back to the car.

* * *

_**Minneapolis, Minnesota**_

Detective Stone dropped the file on the desk and swivelled it around, opening it in front of the agents who stood on the other side. Why the feds were interested in this case was beyond him. He pushed the scene photos aside and pulled out the close-up of the chest.

"Here's what's odd about this thing – the guy wasn't chopped or cut into, no incision. But his heart was ripped out of him like a peach pit," he said, tapping the photo.

"Was he robbed?" Sam looked at Stone curiously.

The detective shook his head. "Phone, watch, money all still on him."

"What about enemies?" Dean asked.

Stone's face twitched in a fleeting smile. "He was in town for a conference. No local connections."

"You guys had another one of these about, uh, six months ago?" Dean leaned on the desk.

"Yeah," Stone looked down at the file. "And we hit a brick wall."

Dean waited and the detective looked back up at him, brows rising. "We had nothing to go on, really."

He turned away, walking to a cart with a television screen and video machine on it, and picking up the remote. "Thought maybe we got lucky here. A park surveillance camera picked up something."

Security footage played on the screen, showing the victim jogging along the path, and another man, much heavier, overtaking him on the left, speeding past and out of camera range.

"Huh. That chubby guy the last person to see the vic alive?" Dean's eyes narrowed as he looked at the last still frame.

"Other than the killer. Name's Paul Hayes," Stone said. "We, uh, pulled him in for questioning."

"So what makes you think he's clean?" Sam asked.

"Well, so far, no reason not to," the detective said with a slight shrug. "I mean, he said he briefly saw the victim, he ran out ahead, that was it."

"What, you mean he didn't fall to his knees and confess to gutting the guy?" Dean looked at him, his tone faintly derisive.

"No," Stone looked at him coldly. "I mean we did a thorough check on the guy, not so much as a parking ticket came up." He turned to gesture at the screen. "I mean, look at him. I mean, sure, he can run a little bit, but Tyson he ain't. You think he's gonna grab Freddy Fitness here and throw him down and rip out his heart?" He looked back to Sam. "I don't think so."

Dean raised his brows, looking at Sam.

"Forgive me if I didn't take him out back and shoot him," Stone added sarcastically, staring at Dean.

For a moment, the detective and Dean stared at each other. Sam looked at them and cleared his throat.

"Okay, uh, so... any idea where we can find this guy?"

"Yeah." Stone said, his gaze shifting dismissively from Dean to Sam. "I'll get the address."

Sam waited until he'd left the room before rounding on his brother.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"What?" Dean looked at the television screen. "You heard him –"

"Dean, we don't have Bobby answering the number on our little white cards anymore, so we don't aggravate law enforcement because if they get mad enough to check on our creds, we're in deep shit," Sam hissed at him furiously. "Or are you okay with being chased by the law … again?"

Dean's mouth compressed as he stared at the television. After a moment, he dragged in a deep breath. "All right. You're right."

He looked at Sam, and shrugged. "You're right, okay?"

* * *

The house was a small two storey in a leafy suburban road, white walls and gym equipment being the most memorable things about it. Sam sat on a kitchen stool, watching as Paul Hayes made himself a nutrient drink of some kind in a blender behind the kitchen counter.

Hayes was definitely the guy who'd outstripped the jogger in the park. In his late forties, he was fair-skinned, with receding silver-threaded grey hair, heavy jowls and a still-reasonably wide girthline, not unlike a few million other middle-aged men throughout the country.

"Sorry. I kind of try to stick to a nutrition and workout schedule," Hayes said, pouring the swampy-looking liquid into a glass. He looked up and tilted the blender toward Sam. "Do you want a hit?"

Sam's brow wrinkled up in alarm. "I'm good. Thanks."

"Oh." Hayes put down the blender and carried his glass around the counter, stopping by the end.

"So, Paul, you passed a runner who was later killed. Did you speak with him at all?"

"Yeah, I went over this with the cops," Paul said, gesturing slightly with his glass as he spoke. "I-I didn't know him. I'd never spoken to him. I ran past him. I never saw him again. The end."

He tipped the glass up, swallowing a large mouthful. "Mm, oh. It's disgusting. It tastes like crap, but it keeps you young," Paul said, smiling cheerfully at Dean as he came into the room.

"Paul, on the security footage from the park, we noticed that the jogger you outraced was a good deal younger than you," Sam said tactfully, looking at him.

"Yeah, and less, uh..." Dean added, with a sweeping gesture.

"Uh, full-figured?" Paul suggested helpfully. "You should've seen me before. Yeah, hugging a desk all day and watching TV all night, eating fried … everything … was killing me," he looked at Sam. "I had a health scare about a year ago."

"Sorry to hear that."

"No, it changed my life," Paul said, glancing around. "I mean, I started taking care of myself."

"Now your body's a temple, huh?" Dean smiled encouragingly.

Paul raised his glass to him. "Where I worship every day!" He swallowed another mouthful of the green liquid. Dean looked at the glass, nose wrinkling involuntarily.

"Uh, is there anything else you need to know?" Paul asked, glancing at his watch. "'Cos, I, uh, I'm on kind of a –"

"Schedule," Sam supplied, nodding as he got to his feet.

"Right, schedule." Paul grinned at him, wiping the green moustache from his lip.

* * *

The café was up-market, dark colours, stone and timber and modern furniture and the rich aromas of freshly made to order coffee filling the interior. Dean sat at the long varnished counter by the window, staring at the laptop screen intently. Sam walked through the tables and sat down at the counter, flipping open the file next to his brother.

"All right, so... what's the word? What did you find poking around at Paul's?" he asked, looking down at the notes.

Dean shook his head. "Ah, just the usual – condoms, hair gel. No hex bags, nothing satanic, nothing spooky."

"So, he didn't seem like a guy who would be voted most likely to disembowel?" Sam asked pointedly.

"No, they never do," Dean said, staring at the screen as he flipped through the hits.

Sam let out his breath in a gusty sigh. He wasn't sure which was more annoying – his brother all hopped up on adrenalin, itching to put a knife into someone, or so completely involved in the research that he didn't even hear the tone of voice Sam used. The answer itself had been no surprise. Monsters were guilty until proven innocent. Never the other way around.

"Wait a minute, here it is," Dean said, his voice rising slightly.

"What, murder?"

"And a do-it-yourself heart bypass. Two days after this one." He frowned as he read the news report.

"What part of Minneapolis?" Sam looked at him.

"The Iowa part." Dean turned around to look at Sam. "Ames."

"Well, Paul was here being questioned. There's no way that could have been him." Sam said quickly. _More than one murderer? More than one monster? When had that ever been the case?_

"This guy was a cop." Dean read through news report. "This is exactly what happened six months ago." He turned to look at Sam. "Minneapolis, then Ames. Guess you missed that one."

"Missed it?" Sam stared at him.

"I told you about the pattern in that … farm … place, in Lincoln," Dean said, closing the laptop and getting up. "Come on, it's only about three hours drive, we can be there before the cops stop taking visitors."

* * *

_**Ames, Iowa**_

Dean looked at the policeman, sitting across the table from them. Officer Levitt was in his mid-thirties, he thought. Didn't think he'd get knuckles rapped by his brother from talking to this dude. Levitt was being pretty candid.

"Arthur Swenson. Real top-shelf officer. Twenty years on the force. He'd ordered a pizza, which the vic delivered," Levitt confirmed.

"And then?" Sam asked.

"The vic didn't make his next drop-off. His body was found on the walk in front of Swenson's." He lifted a shoulder slightly, looking at Sam.

"And he wasn't wearing a heart?" Dean checked.

"No. Heartless," Levitt agreed, straight-faced. Dean looked at Sam.

Sam flicked a glance at his brother. "And, uh, what about Swenson?"

"Crumpled on the front stoop. Covered in blood. Crying like a baby. He'd been in court all week," he said. "Testifying."

The phone on the desk rang, and Levitt picked it up, looking at them. "Excuse me."

He turned away, his voice dropping as he spoke on the phone.

Sam leaned closer to Dean. "So that couldn't have been him in Minneapolis."

"I hate when this happens," Dean muttered back.

Levitt set the phone back on the cradle and raised his brows at them. He had work to do, couldn't be spending all day long talking to the government.

"So, Swenson, what does – what does he have to say?" Dean asked.

Levitt's mouth curved up slightly. "Uh... it's not real helpful."

* * *

The police interview room held a table, two chairs, welded steel bars on the doors and windows and had been painted in an almost-but-not-quite caramel, and an almost-but-not-quite apple green. Dean looked around the room then focussed on Arthur Swenson, twenty-year veteran of the Ames Police Department, dressed in a t-shirt and sweat pants, rocking back and forth at the table, muttering softly and staring at nothing.

"_K'uhul ajaw, Cacao, shi-jiiy. K'uhul ajaw, Cacao, shi-jiiy. K'uhul ajaw, Cacao, shi-jiiy._"

Dean stood at the door, looking at Sam. "So, you getting his statement?"

"Uh, yeah, k-kind of," Sam frowned, holding the small recorder in front of Swenson, listening to the soft babble. He grimaced. "Probably not."

"It's too bad I dropped out of Lunatic 101," Dean said, leaning back against the bars and looking around. Levitt had been right. This wasn't helpful. And it was making the nerves at the back of his neck prickle to see a cop sitting there swaying like a long-term lunatic.

"Whatever it is, it sounds like he's repeating it," Sam leaned closer. Dean looked at Swenson. The guy looked like he was having a very bad trip, he thought.

"Look at his eyes," he said to Sam. He raised his voice and leaned on the table, closer to the police officer. "Hey, Arthur ... did you do this alone?"

Swenson was varying the rocking with bobbing, his head going up and down as he stretched and seemed to retract his neck. _Dude looks like a turkey_, Dean thought, staring at him uneasily.

"Arthur, did some invisible voice tell you you had to kill?" Sam added, looking at him.

Swenson brought his clasped hands down on the table hard, and the muttering became louder, his head bobbing more pronounced. "_K'uhul ajaw, Cacao, shi-jiiy!_"

"Oh, now you've pissed him off," Dean glanced at Sam. "Hey, Art. Can I call you Art?"

He sat on the edge of the table, reaching into his jacket pocket. "Listen, I'm gonna sprinkle your arm with holy water and it's gonna steam and burn if you're possessed by a demon." He pulled out the small metal flask, glancing at Sam when Swenson made no response. "He's a mushroom."

Pouring the holy water over Swenson's wrist, they both watched it drip off the plainly unaffected arm onto the table.

"Okay, not possessed," Sam said quietly.

"Arthur, you want to tell us why you did this?" Dean tried again.

"_K'uhul ajaw, Cacao, shi-jiiy. K'uhul ajaw, Cacao, shi-jiiy. K'uhul ajaw, Cacao, shi-jiiy_."

"Okay." Dean flicked a look at his brother and got up from the table, walking back to the door. The man had clearly fallen off the perch, he thought uncomfortably, hearing the soft muttering behind him. Whatever had happened was locked tight inside his head and nothing could get it out now, he'd thrown away the key and filled the lock with epoxy.

Sam stopped the recording and sat back in the chair, studying the officer. He had a strong sense that this was a big piece of the puzzle they were looking for – but he couldn't see how. Swenson was only one short step from a drooling vegetable.

"Come on, Sam," Dean said, looking out through the door. The guy was giving him the creeps.

* * *

Dean drove into the slot in front of their room and turned off the engine, glancing at his watch. Seven o'clock. He was starving and tired and he wanted a beer. He unlocked the motel room door, pushing it open and pulling off his jacket and tie as he walked in. Tossing them carelessly onto the luggage rack, he kept walking to the bed beside the window and pulled the duffle onto the end. He pushed stuff out of the way as he looked for his t-shirt and jeans.

Sam shed his jacket as he followed Dean in, and sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling out the recorder and hitting play. Officer Swenson's voice filled the room, repeating the same words over and over again.

Dean looked down and picked up his jacket, scrunching it into a ball. He really didn't need to hear that crap again.

Sam clicked the device and the recording stopped. "So, what do you think?"

"Personally, I prefer the Keith Richards version," he said, shoving the jacket back in the bag.

"Any of the words sound familiar to you?"

He shook his head. "If they are words. Sounds like babble to me." He looked at Sam for a moment and remembered, digging into his pocket for his phone. "Wait a second."

"What?" Sam looked at him as he moved to the edge of the bed and sat down.

"I bought a translation app," Dean said, concentrating on bringing it up on the screen.

Sam smiled uncertainly. "You bought an app."

"Yeah," He got it running. "Here, play it." He held out his phone and Sam moved the recorder close to it, clicking play and letting the recording run for a few seconds. Dean nodded and hit search on the app, watching the results.

"And babble wins," he said with a hint of triumph. ""Language unknown."" He held up the phone so that Sam could see the result. Sam looked at the screen and back to his brother. He doubted that the application held every language, living and dead, that had been known to mankind. But he wasn't prepared to spoil Dean's short-lived entertainment either.

His phone rang and he shifted on the bed to pull it from his pants pocket.

"Agent Sambora," he answered, looking at Dean absently as he listened. "What?"

He stood up, looking around for his jacket. "Yeah, we're heading out now."

"What?" Dean looked up.

"Get your jacket and tie back on, Officer Swensen just performed eye surgery on himself at the lockup. They've taken him to the hospital."

"Really? Now?" Dean looked at the jacket on the rack reluctantly. He was tired and hungry and he wanted a damned beer. He didn't want to put on the jacket and tie again and go marching out into the night for who-knew how long. "Dammit."

* * *

Dean looked through the window into the hospital room at Swensen, who was lying on the bed in restraints. Beside him the man's attending doctor watched as well.

"So, Dr Kashi, what are we looking at here, some kind of psychotic break?" he asked, turning to her. Dr Kashi was a small-boned, slender woman, easy on the eye, Dean thought looking down at her. Unfortunately, she had a British accent that reminded him too vividly of another British woman he'd known once.

"Oh, definitely. He was very thorough. Severed the optic nerve. He was determined to remove the eye," she said quietly.

"And he used, uh, what to cut with?"

Her face registered a tiny grimace. "He doesn't look strong enough, but he broke off part of the bed frame and used it as a knife."

Dr Kashi turned to the nurse who brought Swenson's file, taking it. "Thank you."

Dean looked back through the window. "They should put warning labels on those beds."

"Like I said – determined," Dr Kashi said, opening the file.

"I noticed that he had two different-coloured eyes." Dean turned back to her.

"Yes. Apparently, he was in an accident where much of one eye was shattered," she explained. "His vision was saved with a transplant."

"When was this?"

Flicking through the file resting against her arm, she stopped when she got to the man's history, skimming over the details, her brows rising slightly as she read the date. "A year ago, almost to the date." She looked up at him. "And, interestingly, it's the transplanted eye he chose to cut out."

"Really?" Dean looked at Swensen. _Transplanted eye. Transplanted eye that Swensen removed, painfully and forcefully, himself. _He turned back to the doctor. "Hey, let me ask you something, doc. Is it possible to trace the donor of a transplanted organ?"

Dr Kashi looked at him carefully. "Difficult."

"But possible?"

"All things are possible," she smiled at him.

"Hmm." He turned back to Swensen. _Why had the guy cut out the transplanted eye?_ Something was nagging at him, some once-heard reference, dim memory, years-ago movie quote … he closed his eyes and thought of a stone axe, floating in the darkness.

_If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out._

That was it. He opened his eyes and look at Arthur Swensen. He guessed that eye had really offended the man.

* * *

He turned off the engine and sat there for a moment, not moving. His nervous system was buzzing slightly, not as bad as it had been, but a long way from being relaxed. From being able to relax. There was a part of him that wanted to turn the key, reverse back out of the lot and keep driving, just keep driving until he was a long way from anywhere. A long way from Sam, he admitted to himself, that thought amping up the crackle along his nerves on its own.

They weren't what they'd been. Not even before … He lifted his hands and rubbed them hard over his face. It wasn't just the year apart, he knew. It was the fucking great cracks in the foundation stones of their trust. He didn't know how to repair those. Didn't even know if they could ever be repaired. Years of lies and secrets. Too many betrayals. Too much … fucking everything.

_Suck it up_, he told himself. No matter how uncomfortable or painful it gets, no matter how God-awful it becomes, you're sticking with him. He leaned his head against the wheel. The alternative was to try and stay on the wire alone. He wasn't sure he could do that.

_Suck it up._

He got out of the car and picked up the box of take-out and coffee, shutting the door and locking it. Balancing everything on one arm, he managed to get the room key out and open the room door.

"Hey," he said as he shut the door behind him.

"Hey. Arthur Swenson had an eye transplant a year ago, right?" Sam looked up from the laptop then back to the screen.

"Yeah," Dean said, walking past the beds to the table. He put the box down and grabbed the sugar for his coffee.

"Well, I remembered that Paul Hayes was talking about a health scare he had a year ago that changed his life," Sam continued. "So I pulled up his medical records from Minneapolis." He looked up to see Dean staring at him sceptically.

"You want me on board, I'm on board," Sam said, and looked back at the screen.

Dean looked down at his coffee. _Just like that_, he thought. _But for how long? A day? A week? It didn't matter, not really_. They would either get through everything or they wouldn't. He turned back to his brother, listening as Sam continued.

"Anyway, you want to guess who else, other than Arthur Swenson, had a transplant in the last year?"

"Paul Hayes?"

"I gave it away, didn't I?" Sam said, the joke falling flat as his brother ignored it.

Dean leaned against the table. "Okay, so we've got two suspects in two identical murders in two different cities that both had organ transplants a year ago."

"Yeah. Also..."

"Love when there's an "also."" Dean commented, drinking his coffee.

Sam set the laptop aside and shifted to the edge of the bed. "I got to thinking about all that stuff Arthur Swenson was talking about. Maybe your translation app called it "language unknown" because it's a dead language, like ancient Greek or Manx."

"Manx?"

Sam looked at him, and let it go. "So I e-mailed an audio file of Arthur's mumbling to Dr Morrison."

"Who?" Dean's face screwed up as he tried to put anything to the name.

"Dr Morrison, the anthropology Professor who helped us out with the Amazons."

"Yes, okay," Dean nodded, memory trickling back. He'd blocked out the pompous ass the first time he'd met him. "Okay. Well, let's get our asses on the road."

"Headed to...?" Sam's forehead creased up.

"Well, if we are in a repeat of a cycle from six months ago, then, after the murders in Minneapolis and in Ames, the next heart attack was in Boulder, Colorado," Dean explained hurriedly, already calculating time and distance and fuel.

"Boulder? Where the hell you'd get Boulder?" Sam looked at him.

"Just running a hunch," he said, putting his coffee down and turning to the bed to get the duffle packed.

* * *

_**I-80 W, North Dakota**_

The black car sped along the interstate, heading west. They'd passed North Platte an hour ago, and weren't far from the Colorado border. Dean watched the road ahead, as he wove through the slower vehicles, changing lanes, keeping them moving at a steady eighty. He was starting to feel it again. The interplay between himself and the car, and the road, and the traffic … nerve and muscle, metal and thrust, tarmac and shadows alongside them, and tendon and rubber … he smiled slightly as his hands rested lightly on the wheel and directed them through without effort.

Sam looked at the sea of red lights ahead of them, brightening and dimming as they manoeuvred through them. He could feel his brother's energy snapping and crackling through the car's interior. He could see, from the corner of his eye, Dean's slight movements as he caught the intentions of this driver or that driver, reflexes cat-fast in cutting them off or moving out of way. There wasn't anything that was quiet in Dean. Nothing that rested.

"All right, case is coming together. Things are coming together, man. You and me. It is all good," Dean said, voice deep and almost happy. He looked over at Sam.

"Hey."

"What?" Sam turned his head, brow lifting.

"What are you thinking about? Organic tomatoes?" Dean asked, the almost-happy feeling fading a little.

"Uh, I'm not thinking about anything," Sam said uncertainly, looking at him. He turned back to the front slowly.

"I don't know about you, but this last year has given me a new perspective."

Sam felt his heart sink a little. "I hear you, believe me."

"I know where I'm at my best, and that is right here, driving down crazy street, next to you." Dean slapped the wheel lightly, looking over at Sam.

"Makes sense," Sam said uncomfortably, too aware he had to try to say something, and way too aware that no matter how he phrased it, it would probably explode in his face.

"Yes, it does."

"Or ... maybe you don't need me," Sam said quietly. He almost heard Dean's attention sharpen on him, and he drew in a deep breath. It was time he said something to his brother. He couldn't just let it go on and on without Dean knowing that he didn't want the same things anymore. Hell, had _never_ wanted them, not in the same way.

"I mean, maybe you're at your best hacking and slicing your way through all the world's crap alone, not having to explain yourself to anybody."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Dean said slowly, his almost-happy feeling gone. His heart was pounding uncomfortably against his ribs. "Seeing as I have so many other brothers I can talk to about this stuff."

He shot a look at Sam, mouth tight.

Sam heard the change in his tone, and sighed. "Look, I'm not saying I'm bailing on you. I'm just saying make room for the possibility that we want different things. I mean, I want my time to count for something."

Dean stiffened slightly, brows drawing together. "So, what we do doesn't count?"

His phone rang, the sound shrill in the tension that filled the space between them. Dean looked at Sam as he extracted it.

"Yeah? Hey, Dr. Kashi." The brusqueness in his voice softened as he listened to her. "Okay. Thank you. Uh … could you run one more name for me? Yeah – Hayes, Paul. Uh-huh. And the donor? Seriously? How many others? Did anybody from Boulder, Colorado, receive any of those organs? Okay, thank you."

He closed the phone and put it back in his pocket, glancing at Sam. The decision to let the previous conversation go was instant. He didn't want to hear what Sam wanted. He wanted to go back to not-talking. It felt safer.

"Well, this is gonna rock your socks. She says that both Paul Hayes' kidney and Arthur Swenson's new eye came from – you ready for this? – Brick Holmes."

Sam heard the change in Dean's tone and understood. This was how they'd done it as kids. They'd perfected this game, both using any outside opportunity to not-talk, as Dean had called it once. Let the world interrupt and don't go back. For the moment, at least, he was happy to play.

"You don't mean _the_ Brick Holmes," he said disbelievingly, not having to pretend too hard. Brick Holmes had been a legend. Had been his hero, once upon a time.

"I do."

"The all-pro quarterback?"

"Indeed. Yeah, the guy played at the top of his game for like a million years, didn't he?" Dean dug through his memories of earlier years, when they'd watched the games sometimes. Sam was playing, that was all he cared about right now.

"Yeah, he – he bought it in a car crash last year," Sam turned to his brother, remembering bits and pieces of the news reports now.

"Yeah," Dean agreed, not bothering to remind Sam that he hadn't been around last year. That came under talking, not not-talking.

"Nose-dived off a bridge or something. He must've signed a donor card," Sam's voice dropped a little as he remembered that Dean hadn't been around last year. He looked through the windshield. "Did the doc say how many organs he donated?"

"Including our two suspects? Eight," Dean said, glad to be on safer ground again.

"Eight?"

"Eight."

"Okay, um, and one of them's in Boulder, am I right?" Sam asked, feeling his stomach twitching a little at the multiple levels of duplicity that currently flowed between them, like rip currents in a treacherous ocean.

"You would be wrong. That's the bad news. Good news is, Brick lived just outside of Boulder." Dean stared at the road. The previous attacks had culminated in Boulder. He wasn't sure why the pattern hadn't repeated. He'd checked the police databases and was sure of the information.

"Well, Brick's dead," Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, but he's all we got, so we are going to Boulder," Dean said, fingers curling tightly around the wheel. He took the 76 where it curved south on the border between North Dakota and Colorado, heading for Sterling. _Another two, maybe three hours, max,_ he thought.

_Maybe you don't need me. _

His mouth compressed as he heard his brother's words again. His stomach knotted and he looked at Sam sideways, seeing him looking out the passenger window, staring at the blackness of the nighttime countryside. He'd heard what Sam had wanted to say and it hadn't been '_you don't need me_'.

The little cabin, standing in between Sam and his father, Sam's face twisted in anger. _I was always going to go_. The words from the past bounced around inside his head and he struggled not to let anything show, not to let anything out at all. His fingers were welded to the wheel, bones white under the stretched out skin.

_Maybe you're at your best hacking and slicing your way through all the world's crap alone._

Alone. No brother. No family. No friends. So he could turn into … Gordon? Turn into a monster killing other monsters? He was walking along the wire with his eyes closed as it was. He needed Sam here, needed him to keep from falling. But Sam didn't need him, he thought, admitting it slowly, holding the idea tentatively like a glass ball of immense fragility. The truth was, no one needed him.

_Purgatory_ coalesced in the dark turmoil of his mind, the image of the stone axe pushing everything else away. Kill or be killed. Survive or die. Simple choices.

Dean drew in a deep breath, focussing his attention on the image. He was a hunter. That was who he was and he would be that whether he was surrounded by people or the last man on earth. Nothing could change it.


	8. Chapter 8 Choices

**Chapter 8 Choices**

* * *

_**Boulder, Colorado**_

The house was large, built of stone and brick, set on spacious grounds that were perfectly manicured. Dean drove around the paved driveway and parked under the covered portico next to the front doors, whistling softly.

Sam glanced at him. "You should see the homes the pro-basketball players have."

Dean grinned and shrugged, getting out of the car and walking up to the front door. Eleanor Holmes answered their knock, an elegant woman in her late sixties, immaculately dressed and reserved while being courteous. She ushered them to the living room and gestured for them to take seats, moving around the low table to the long sofa that sat in front of the windows to face them.

Dean watched her sit, face composed, hands clasped in her lap, and wondered how much information they'd get out of her. She seemed to be the sort of woman who would be hard to rattle.

"I just want to say how sorry we are for your loss, Mrs. Holmes," he said, playing sincerity, the first card in his deck.

She looked at him politely. "Thank you."

_Scratch sincerity_, Dean thought, watching her turn to Sam.

"You know, Brick Holmes was my idol back in high school. Amazing career. Uh, eighteen pro seasons, seven division championships, four Super Bowls – never slowed down a day," Sam said, gushing a little. Dean turned his head slowly, staring at his brother.

Eleanor seemed to find the adulation normal. "Brick lived for competition and athletic perfection. I don't think it occurred to his fans that he was human, like the rest of us."

"Did you know your son was an organ donor?" Sam asked forthrightly, the hero-worship gone from his face and voice. And Dean saw her hesitate, the first time she wasn't completely prepared. His attention sharpened.

"Does that make this a matter for the FBI?" she asked, looking at Sam, a very faint edge to her words.

Dean smiled. "Like we explained earlier, we're mostly here, uh, to dot some i's on a different matter."

He could feel her shifting gears, admiring the way she moved to a seemingly helpful and utterly innocuous explanation in seconds.

"There was a public-awareness thing a few years ago. A lot of star athletes signed on. I'm sure Brick didn't think twice about it, since he never thought he was going to die," she said, the tiniest catch in her voice adding a poignancy to her brave smile.

_Damn, this gal was good_, Dean struggled to keep his face neutral.

"A lot of jocks are like that, I guess," Dean said, wondering if he could push her a little harder, if she would show a little more under a different kind of pressure. "You know, I – I can't help wonder what happened that night on that bridge. There was light traffic, no alcohol involved, no skid marks. Big-time athlete, reflexes like a cat, how is it that he just drives off the side of a bridge?"

"When things happen that aren't supposed to happen, they're called accidents, I believe," Eleanor said slowly, her face hardening slightly, her eyes cold as she looked directly at him.

"So, everybody knows about Brick's football career, obviously, but no one knows much about his personal life. Was he ever married?" Sam asked quickly.

Dean watched her eyes cut away to his brother. He'd definitely scored a hit with the push, but it could've been just the insinuation, she seemed protective of her son. He watched her regain her composure, settling back into the comfortable persona of star's mother that she played to perfection.

"Just to the game. He gave it everything he had," she said firmly. "It's a difficult life."

_Round two_, Dean thought uncomfortably. "Did you notice any changes in Brick before he died – you know, anyone, anything new in his life?"

Eleanor was relaxed again as she answered the question. "No, no. I don't think so."

"So, no new interests? Fly fishing, stamp collecting, the occult?" He watched her expression as the last one word sank in.

"The occult?" she repeated back to him disbelievingly.

"As a "for instance"," Dean qualified.

"No," Eleanor said disparagingly, looking at him as she said it then glancing to Sam. "Everything was just as it had been." She looked down and continued smoothly. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid my time is up."

She rose to her feet, and Dean glanced at Sam, both getting up. "The university is naming a new athletic building after Brick. I can't be late."

"Of course," Sam said quickly. "Just one more question."

Eleanor cut him off, smiling at both of them to soften the dismissal. "There is _always_ one more question in life, isn't there? That's what I find."

She walked past them to the door and Dean shrugged, the two of them following her out.

The front door closed definitively behind them and Dean pulled out his phone as he walked back to the car.

"Oh, she didn't want to say much, did she?" Sam sighed, looking around the gardens.

"Son of a bitch."

"What?"

"There it is. It happened," Dean said, looking at the small screen, brows drawn together. _Late – because the monster was running late or a delay in finding the body_, he wondered?

"Come on, don't tell me someone had their heart ripped out here in Boulder," Sam said, looking over his shoulder.

Dean turned away, heading for the other side of the car. "All right, then I won't tell you."

* * *

Eleanor Holmes stood to one side of the multi-paned window beside the front door, watching the agents get into the black car and drive away. She'd dealt with so many people in the last year – in all the long years – and those two had given her an unsettling feeling. They'd been fishing, but she had the sense that they'd had little idea of what they'd been looking for.

It had all come crashing down with the organ donation, she thought. Inyo had hoped it could all end with his death. He'd been wrong. And now … now, she had no way of even knowing what would happen next. She thought of the young man's question about the occult. Not exactly the occult, although she supposed it might fall into the general category.

She turned from the window and walked to the staircase, gripping the carved newel post and looking up.

A tall, slender dark-haired woman stood on the first landing, looking down at her.

"What are you doing here, Randa?" Eleanor asked, frowning.

"You know I like to stay close to the mother ship." Randa smiled and looked around, the smile disappearing as she started down the stairs. "I saw a car out front, so I came in the back. Cops?"

Eleanor looked down and began to walk up the steps. The woman was intrusive and tiring to be around, with the boundless energy of Inyo's heart and a boundless paranoia about being found out. "I suppose Brick's death continues to fascinate."

"So we're clear. You're still being very careful about what you say?" Randa turned to look up at her as she reached the landing.

"I'm old, Randa, not an idiot," Eleanor said acerbically.

"I'm just trying to protect Brick," the young woman said pacifically, although the softness of her tone didn't really reach her eyes.

Eleanor looked down. "And so am I."

"Brick's heart beats inside here now," Randa said passionately. "He gave me new life. And I'll watch out for you like Brick did."

"I don't need your concern," Eleanor said.

"We need each other," Randa said sharply, eyes narrowing. "And Brick needs us. You keep our little secret safe, and the three of us will be just fine."

Eleanor watched her walk down the stairs. Inyo had always been able to overcome Cacao's influences, he'd been a warrior, strong and clear. The girl had none of that strength, none of that clarity. If anyone was going to crack, the older woman thought, it would be her. And as long as she didn't mention Brick Holmes, that would be fine with her.

* * *

The Boulder motel room had been decorated with a Western motif, cowboys on horses on the room divider, heavy, varnished timberwork set off with sage-green walls. Dean sat by the front window, working on the laptop, half-listening to Sam's phone conversation with the pompous-ass professor.

"All right, Professor Morrison, that does it. The FBI thanks you," Sam stood up, picking up his notebook from the bed. "Yes, I am totally looking into adding you as a technical advisor … yeah, it – it comes with a medical plan … all right, goodbye." He looked at the phone as he turned it off.

"He come through?" Dean asked.

Sam turned around, putting the phone into his pocket. "Yeah, he did."

"All right, so, here's what crazy Arthur Swenson was babbling over and over." Sam walked to the table, pulling out the second chair and sitting down as he read from his notes. "Um, first, it is a dead language – ancient Mayan."

"Doesn't get much deader than that," Dean murmured, looking at the screen.

"So, what Arthur was saying was "The divine god Cacao is born."" Sam read.

"Cacao?"

"Cacao," Sam confirmed. "Yeah, the Mayan God of maize – corn, the big crop. Cacao was the most powerful god because maize was the most important thing to the Mayans." He thought about the ancient culture and added, "Well, that and torturing and killing everyone in sight."

"So, this is what we're looking for, is a thousand-year-old culture's god of corn?"

"Uh, I guess," Sam agreed, looking back at his notes.

Dean looked back at the screen in front of him. "Well, whatever it is, we better cap it quick, or somebody in Phoenix is next up to get their heart yanked."

"Someone in Phoenix got a piece of Brick?" Sam looked up.

"Yeah, I got a name and e-mailed the cops when we got here," Dean said. "Just heard back from them. They haven't seen the guy in days."

"Uh, oh, got another e-mail here, too. This one is for you. From a university. Answering questions about admissions." Dean read the salient points from the email on the screen.

_Goddamn it_, Sam thought. _Need a webmail account_. "Just something I'm looking into. An option," he said casually, looking down at his notebook.

Dean looked at him. "You're seriously talking about hanging it up?"

"I'm not talking about anything, Dean. I'm just looking at options," Sam said defensively, meeting Dean's look. His brother just kept looking at him, and he glanced away. "So, what, should we just go to Phoenix and chase our tails until this guy shows his face?"

Dean looked down at the keyboard. "No. Uh, Brick Holmes is the way into this."

He stood up, walking around the table and heading for the bathroom. "Eleanor Holmes was doing her damnedest not to tell us a thing," he added over his shoulder. "Nice job on changing the subject, though."

Dean closed the bathroom door and leaned back against it, staring at the shower on the other side of the small room. _God, déjà vu_, he thought, feeling his heart pounding at the base of his throat. _Checking out options_. It would've been funny if it hadn't been so goddamned not. Sam was still planning in secret. _Not talking about anything_ was right. Thirty years old and still hiding everything. He pushed off the door and went to the sink, turning the tap on and cupping both hands under the running water, splashing it over his face, the bite of the cold mountain water steadying him a little.

Did he want to talk about it? Because there was absolutely nothing stopping him from walking back out there and asking. He turned off the tap and dried his face, looking into mirror above the sink for a moment and then back down at the smooth porcelain bowl between his hands. No. He didn't want to talk. He wanted things to be the way they had been without needing to talk about anything.

_Good luck with that_, he told himself sourly. He wasn't even sure what '_the way it had been_' was now. How they'd been in 2010? When Sam had had no soul? Or 2009, when he'd wanted to hand himself over to Michael? Or maybe 2008, when Sam had been drinking blood? Or before then … '07 and the psychic visions … '06 and the nightmares and pain of Jessica's death …

He leaned against the sink and closed his eyes. Face it, there was no idyllic time when they'd been good. Not since before Stanford, and probably not even then. Just years of life, of hunting and arguing and saving each other's lives, and all of it like some complicated tapestry that he could never get far enough way from to see the whole picture.

* * *

The Holmes house was in darkness when they walked down the drive, car gone. Eleanor hadn't lied about her appointment, at least. Dean dropped to one knee and held the penlight between his teeth as he picked the lock on the front door, hearing the welcome click as the tenon was released from the mortise and turning the handle as he got to his feet.

He swapped the penlight for the bigger flashlight and beside him, Sam turned his on as they headed up the stairs.

"All right, naming ceremony's over at ten. We got to get in and out," Dean said when they reached the top.

Sam gestured down the hall. "Master bedroom."

"Yeah."

The master bedroom was easily discernible, double doors instead of a single, and the room was bigger than their motel room. Dean looked around at the widely-spaced furniture, the enormous bed with its pearl comforter.

"Closets," Dean said, flashlight playing over the two doors that stood to either side of the dresser. He walked to the closest, opening it and flicking on the light, turning off his flashlight and tucking it back into the jacket pocket.

"Brick's closet," Dean identified his, looking over the racks of suits and shirts and jackets, the shelving of shoes and accessories. "Looks like the stuff hasn't been touched in a year." He pulled opened a deep drawer. "Man, what this stuff would go for on eBay." He picked up a bottle of peroxide and applicator, nestled in amongst the jumpers and soft shirts.

"Hey, Sammy, would it totally crush you to know that your boy Brick wasn't a natural blond?"

In the other closet, Sam looked around distractedly, forehead creased as he looked more closely at the clothing hanging in there. "Dean, this is really weird."

"What you got?" Dean closed the drawer and kept looking.

"I don't know. Is this Eleanor's closet?" Sam stared at the skirts and blouses, jackets and rows of pumps, sandals, slip-ons and purses on the shelf beside him.

"Why would his mother's closet be in here? Are you sure?" Dean asked absently, looking through another drawer's contents.

Sam lifted an outfit from the rail, the beige Chanel-styled jacket and Hermes scarf perfectly familiar. "Check this out."

He came out of the closet and held it up as Dean came out of Brick's closet. "This is what she was wearing today when we talked to her."

"Maybe she moved into Brick's room after he died," Dean suggested. He glanced at the king-size bed on the other wall of the room. "Or ..."

Sam followed his gaze. "Oh." He turned away, back to the closet. "Thanks, Dean. Now that image is permanently etched into my retinas."

Sam walked back into the closet, hanging the jacket up on the rail and looking around the space. It was Eleanor's closet, he thought. There wasn't any doubt about that.

Dean looked at the rack at the far end of the room, fingers brushing over the fabric of the clothing hanging there. Between two jackets he caught a glimpse of metal on the rear wall, and pushed the clothing aside, revealing a door, fitted carefully into the wall.

"That's what I'm talking about," he said, satisfaction in his voice. Sam came out of his closet and watched as his brother opened the door, following him into a small space lined with shelving, and cupboards. Dean flicked on the lightswitch, staring around at the sporting equipment and uniforms, trophies and awards, the framed newsclipping and photographs taking up the remaining bare wallspace.

"Wow." Sam brushed by his brother and walked into the room, turning around, a wide grin on his face. "I knew he'd have something like this in his house."

"This is a lot of hardware," Dean walked slowly into the room, looking at the shelf in front of him. "Okay, the football trophies I get, but there's a lot of other stuff here," he stared at the baseball helmet, basket of balls, gloves and bats. On the lower shelf were boxing gloves and rolls of tape. "– I mean, baseball, boxing." He turned to the bright, fire-retardant suit hanging beside him, brows rising. "Race-car driving."

Sam pulled a bamboo sword from the basket beside him, looking at his brother. "He was a fan. Any kind of athlete – he respected them," he said slowly. "I mean, look at all the old stuff he's got – a cricket bat, golf clubs, a Kendo sword, archery equipment." He turned to look behind him. On the wall, three spears had been mounted, their polished metal heads gleaming softly in the light.

Dean looked at the cupboard next to him. The top was covered in huge trophies, a little tarnished and dusty. Underneath were more shelves. The top one contained a binder and loose papers. Beneath that, several cardboard boxes sat side by side, their brown paper coverings torn, the cardboard a little bent. Old, he thought, pulling the top one out. He lifted the lid and looked inside. The box was filled with paper, and the top one caught his eye with an address and salutation. Letters.

"Hey, look at this."

He put the box down on a table and pulled out the letter, the paper yellowing and dry between his fingers.

It was a letter alright; he read it through and looked at the box. "Grab another one and a chair."

They sat on either side of the table and pulled out handfuls of the letters, starting to read.

Sam looked up after he'd read through the first ten letters. "They're all the same. _Dearest Betsy... blah blah blah_. Who's Betsy?"

Dean glanced at him as he pulled another letter from its envelope. "I don't know. Girlfriend? Eleanor didn't mention a Betsy."

"This one looks old. Uh, _Dearest Betsy, third day of training camp. Roadwork improving. Working on my left jab. They say this kid Sugar Ray is gonna be tough_."

Dean looked at him, brows rising in recognition. "Sugar Ray? As in Robinson? Didn't he box in, like, the '40s? Is it signed the same?"

"Yeah. _Love, me_."

"Here. _Dearest Betsy, on the road again. So hard to be away from you, honey. Will give the Red Sox hell and get back to you_." Dean read out the letter, mouth rising at one corner at the mention of the team.

_"Dearest Betsy ..."_

"_Dearest Betsy, Le Mans will be a bitch this year with all the rain ..._" Dean read.

"..._the Phillies are tough, but we're looking to be tougher_..." Sam read.

"..._them Dodgers will wish they never left Brooklyn_..."

"..._looking for my best gal Friday night at the Garden_..."

"..._our o-line hung tough. I had all day back there_..."

"..._Alain Prost is a monster in the straightaway_..."

"_Dearest Betsy..._"

"_Dearest Betsy..._"

"_Love, me_."

Sam picked up a letter, the paper smooth and crisp and white. "Wait, this one looks recent. _Dearest Betsy ... So tired of it all_."

They looked at each other, reaching the same conclusion. Dean glanced at his watch.

"Come on, we gotta find his personal papers, we'll take with," he said, standing up.

* * *

Dean rubbed his eyes, looking around at the coffee pot on the kitchenette counter. Empty. He sighed. Outside it'd been daylight for a couple of hours and they were still going through what they'd found in Brick's private room. He picked up the clipped press cuttings and kept reading, the soft click of the laptop's keys a familiar background noise that he barely noticed.

"Hey. I pulled up the names on those trophies. Check it out," Sam said, staring at the screen.

Dean put the clippings down and got up, dragging the chair to the table and sitting down again behind his brother. On the laptop's screen, Sam had a picture of Brick Holmes on the cover of Sports News Weekly.

"All right, Brick Holmes, football player. Charlie Karnes, race-car driver." Another picture appeared beside the first, showing a dark-haired young man. "Davey Samuelson, baseball player. Kelly Duran, boxer." The four pictures overlaid each other. "Four different guys, right?"

"Okay."

"Check this out." He arranged the pictures so that all four appeared in a square, two over two. "Same dark eyes, same cheekbones, nose, mouth."

Dean looked at the screen. "Wait, are you saying that these four guys who all look to be in their mid-20s and go back 70 years could be the same guy?"

Sam gestured at the screen. The facial similarities weren't lying.

"Huh. For a 95-year-old, Brick Holmes could take a hit," Dean said quietly.

* * *

_**Four hours later.**_

On the counter the coffee pot was again empty, the light off. Next to it a paper bag was filled with the refuse of the take-out Dean had gone out for two hours ago, the smell still leaking into the room, onions and sharp, vinegary scent of the pickles that had come with Sam's sandwich, predominantly. Sam looked at the results of the news search he'd run on each of the four athletes, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the screen, trying to find the matches were one had retired or 'died' and the next had started a new career. It wasn't that easy to be reborn every fifty years or so, especially for the later incarnations which had needed more and more paperwork to appear legit.

Dean sat in the chair next to his bed, papers and notes and books spread out in front of him. Bobby's library, mostly, everything he could dig out about the Mayans that the man had had. He chewed his lip as one fact leapt out at him.

"So, if all those athletes were the same guy, how'd he pull it off?" Sam asked frustratedly, no connections appearing in any of the searches. "Appear, then go away and come back with a new look?"

Dean glanced up at him, then back to the book he was reading. "Cacao, the, uh, the – the maize God – was Mayan, right?"

Sam turned around. "Yeah."

"The Maya were all about war and torture and conquest and –" He looked at Sam significantly "–sports. This says, "Their athletes were treated like kings." The Mayan jocks made sacrifices to Cacao by – ready for this? – killing a victim, pulling out his heart, and eating it."

It was too close to what was going on to ignore. Dean continued, 'They believed the rituals gave them super-charged power over their opponents."

"Yeah, but they didn't stay young forever," Sam objected, frowning. "So, what? Maybe Brick just made some kind of deal with this Cacao?"

Dean shrugged. "Well, we've seen it before – people making deals with demons, gods. I mean, maybe he stayed young and strong so long as the sacrifices kept coming?" He watched his brother running it through. It was one thing they did well together, putting it out, checking it for holes. "Remember all that antique sports equipment he had? This guy could go back to the Mayan days."

"Wow," Sam said quietly, turning and getting to his feet. "So, one of the greatest QBs to ever play the game was over nine-hundred years old."

"Well, that explains Brick, but what about the mooks carrying his spare parts?" Dean asked.

"Maybe the spell went along for the ride and infected the people who got his organs?" Sam turned around, thinking about it. "Remember how Paul Hayes said he had a health scare that changed his life? I mean, maybe the spell could compel him to keep carrying out the ritual." He sat down in front of the laptop again.

"Sort of like getting bit by a werewolf," Dean speculated out loud. "Once you're infected, you do what you got to do, especially if you like the results."

"Right, except old Arthur, the dedicated cop, couldn't handle it and went nuts," Sam extrapolated further. It was hanging together, not all the pieces there yet, but most of them. They had a way to go. He thought of his childhood hero, letting out his breath in a gusty exhale. "Brick Holmes, a heart eater. Who knew?"

"Yeah, sorry, buddy. The mighty – they fall hard, huh?" Dean looked back at his book. Sports heroes. Like looking up to politicians. Not real heroes. Not warriors.

Sam focussed on the screen, looking at the picture of Kelly Duran he'd found earlier.

"Well, at least he wasn't sleeping with his mother."

"Yeah, good, Sam," Dean said, looking up with a small laugh. "Find the silver lining."

"No, seriously. Look." Sam gestured to the screen, turning it around toward his brother.

Dean moved his chair closer to the table, reading the caption. "'Fighter Kelly Duran is congratulated on a second-round knockout by wife Betsy.' _Dearest Betsy_."

Sam huffed softly. Dean looked at him.

"Eleanor." They said the word together.

* * *

The house and garden were quiet and peaceful as the Impala growled into the drive, sending a small flock of birds in the low hedge wheeling and chirping for the higher trees. Dean pulled up in front of the porch and got out, hand touching the outline of the Colt in his jacket pocket lightly, shifting to the knife sheathed behind his hip.

He met Sam as he came around the front of the car, and they climbed the steps together, Sam knocking hard on the door.

Eleanor Holmes opened the door and looked up at them, the welcoming smile fading away as she looked at their faces.

"Hello, Eleanor," Sam said.

"Or would you rather us call you Betsy?" Dean asked, looking down at her, watching the faded blue eyes widen and fill with fear.

Eleanor felt a shiver pass through her, followed by a wave of relief. It was over, all the years of secrets were finally over. She opened the door wide and turned, going to the living room, leaving them to follow her inside.

"Look, Eleanor, innocent people are dying," Sam said, watching her move aimlessly and silently around the room, touching things with her fingertips.

He glanced at his brother, seated in the other armchair. Dean shook his head slightly. Give her some time, the gesture said.

"And they're gonna continue to die until we stop it," Sam said, looking back at her.

She walked to the sofa, and sat down, facing them, hands stiffly on her knees, looking at the floor at her feet.

"Did you know about the murders over the past year?" Dean asked, his voice hard. She looked up at him, and he saw the shock in her face.

"No. I didn't." She shook her head. "I thought when – when Brick died, it would be over." Her breath rushed out on the last word.

Dean felt Sam's gaze brush over him. He believed her. The relief earlier, the tightly-controlled fear he could see in her now … she hadn't known. But she knew a lot about what was going on, about Brick and how it'd all begun.

"Help us. Betsy, this is not what you want Brick's legacy to be," he said, pressing her.

_Betsy_. She smiled a little at his use of that old name. Hers for most of her life, but not the last twenty years, and never again. Elizabeth Eleanor Cranton. That had been her name when she'd met Kelly Duran, and fallen in love, and gotten married. Kelly had said it was too formal for a simple Irish boxer and he'd called her Betsy. He'd had a deep, warm voice too, she thought, looking at the man sitting across from her.

"His Mayan name was Inyo," she started, looking from one to the other as she spoke, as she explained. "He was a proud young athlete, nearly a thousand years ago. He lived for sport and never wanted his days in the sun to end," she said, her voice trembling as she remembered him, heard his voice in her mind when he'd told her of his beginnings. "So he arranged a bargain with the god Cacao through a high priest."

"Stay young forever," Dean prompted.

"As long as the sacrifices continued," Betsy confirmed. "Twice a year. Once for the planting. Once for harvest."

"When did you find out about this?" Sam asked, unsure if he believed in her or not.

She turned to him. "Not until I began to age and – and Brick – Kelly, as he was when I met him – did not," she smiled to cover the memory of that time, her suspicions, her fears, the fights and the tears and the terrible knowledge that he had eventually shared with her.

"But by that time, Brick himself had changed. _Inside_. He wasn't just the warrior whose only reason for living was combat. He –," she hesitated, wondering if these two young men would even understand how it had been for Inyo, how it had been for them. That feeling, it still filled her heart. "We were deeply, deeply in love. So in love, I'm ashamed to say, that when I found out that – how my husband stayed young and strong, I chose to ignore it." She looked away, unable to find regret in her decision, despite the shame of knowing that people had died for her happiness.

"You and Brick had to go underground from time to time to hide your secret, right?" Sam looked at her.

"Every ten years or so, he would, uh, re-emerge with a new look, a new name." She nodded. "And me, I was the wife, and I was the woman in hiding, and then, when I got into my forties, I became Brick's mother. Eleanor."

She'd wanted him to stop then. Had wanted the pretence to be over, for them to age together.

"_If I stop the sacrifices, Betsy, I won't age with you," he'd said, kneeling in front of her and holding her hands tightly. "Nine hundred years will drop on me and what will be left at your side will be a pile of dust – is that what you want?"_

His voice, pleading and angry and despairing, filled her mind.

"I am so tired," she said, looking at them. "You can't imagine the burden of it all. I think even Brick was through. He could see the end of my days were at hand, and ...," she stopped, more memories filling her, bringing an old and deep ache in her heart with them. "He had lived centuries all alone, but I don't think he could bear the thought of life without me. That's why he drove off that bridge." She looked down at her hands, trying to swallow the tears back, trying to regain something of her control. She looked up at Dean, her eyes shimmering. "You must think I'm a monster."

"No," Dean said firmly. He didn't know what she'd felt, not really. Grief he understood, but not her reason for it, not the sort of love that she claimed. He knew that it existed, though, for others. For his father. And he'd seen how it drove people. "No, just that you married one."

He looked away from the surprise and the gratitude that lit up her face, that he'd understood. "Well, see, here's the deal. Now there are eight killers out there that we have to deal with, not just one."

"I don't think so," Betsy said, shaking her head.

"What?" Sam said, exchanging a glance with his brother. "Why not?"

Betsy looked at him. "Brick used to say the heart was key. That was the focus of the sacrifice."

"Are you saying that if we stop Brick's beating heart, then we could stop the whole thing?" Dean asked slowly.

Betsy nodded. Dean looked at Sam.

"Do you know where the person is who has the heart?" Sam watched her expression change, wary and frightened as she straightened slightly. "Do you _know_?"

* * *

The Bunny Hole sat in between an old-fashioned brick office building and a walk-up apartment block in a nondescript street off Mapleton Avenue. The black car pulled up to the meter on the opposite side of the road, engine rumbling softly as the light traffic passed by them and the railway crossing bells began clanging as a train hooted nearby.

Dean pulled on the brake and turned the key, looking at the club. He turned back to Sam. "Really? Our king daddy monster is a stripper?"

"We're pretty sure this is gonna work, right?" Sam ignored the comment, more worried about the plan.

"Well, as long as Betsy knows what she's talking about," Dean said, reaching over to the back seat and yanking the gear bag over, taking a wide-bladed sheathed knife from it and handing it to Sam. "Mildew. Definitely thinking outside the box."

"You think Brick thought maybe he'd burn to nothing when he crashed that car?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Dean said. "But he didn't, which brings us here."

He got out of the car, hearing Sam opening the other door behind him, and crossed the street. The main doors were locked up tight and a little too visible to make breaking in broad daylight a viable option. He glanced around and saw the narrow side alley, walking toward it as Sam followed.

At the end of the alley, the rear door beckoned, overlooked by mostly blank brick walls, the neon signs washed out in the daylight, more artlessly unprovocative paintings of ladies in compromising positions covering the doors. Sam looked around as Dean picked the padlock on the chain holding the doors closed and let them in.

The building was dark and they pulled out their flashlights, beams flicking up the narrow wooden stairs and along the walls and doorways as they moved deeper inside.

At the top of the stairs, they moved into a wider room, lockers and mirrors and posters along the walls confirming Dean's olfactory judgement of the room's purpose.

He smiled as he looked at Sam. "Smell that?"

Sam inhaled and looked at his brother. "You're gross."

They climbed another set of stairs, emerging in the main salon of the club, bar and tables and chairs surrounding a deep and wide stage, the edges and columns lit by bright blue neon strips. A heavy clunk from behind the stage brought up the house lights and they turned to the closed gold lamé curtains, seeing a shadow moving behind them.

Randa came out between the folds, dressed in a loose sleeveless top, skin-tight denim jeans, a long red feather earring dangling down to her chest from one ear. Dean and Sam turned off their flashlights as they watched her.

As monsters went, Dean thought appraisingly, she was the one of the most attractive he'd come across.

"Eleanor sent you, right? I figured she'd probably break and give me up," she said calmly, walking slowly downstage toward them, pausing for a moment to let her fingers slip down the neon pole near the front of the stage. "This won't end well for her, of course." She took another step closer to them, adding, "Not that it's gonna end well for you."

Sam drew out the knife, shifting his feet and finding his balance, as Dean stood quietly, just waiting.

Randa smiled at the sight of the blade. "Oh, now, you don't think we're gonna let you do that, do you?"

"_We_?" Dean looked at her, brow lifted.

Randa stepped back and raised her brows, her gaze cutting to one side. Dean and Sam heard them at the same time, ducking as the metal trays bounced off them and the two men grabbed at them. Sam slashed low with the knife, Hayes stepping to one side and gripping an arm and shoulder tightly. The man's hands felt like claws of steel and Sam was lifted and thrown across the room, hitting the steel pipe balustrade of the stairs with an ominous clanging noise.

Dean had the Colt out and aimed at Hayes, the chubby health nut stepping in blindingly fast and sweeping his arm aside, the straight jab like a sledgehammer into his jaw, spinning him into the arms of the bigger Asian man standing behind him. He slammed his fist into the forearm holding him, knuckles splitting as they hit muscle like iron. He tried to break the other arm's hold and felt himself lifted and thrown onto the stage, slamming down onto his back, the pincer-like grip of missing person, Jimmy Tong, biting into his shoulder, Jimmy's other hand curling around his elbow. Hayes reached out and grabbed his left shoulder and arm, the same strength in his grip, and Dean realised that he might just be trapped here as he fought against them.

"Huh, you guys are stronger than you look," he muttered, trying to shift his weight against one side then the other.

"Comes with the package. Plus, I work out a lot," Hayes said cheerfully, fingers biting deeper, starting to tear along the muscle. Dean flinched at the sharp, acid pain.

Dean looked up as Randa walked over, four-inch stiletto heels of her shoes clicking on the stage floor, stopping with her feet to either side of his right leg. She looked down at him thoughtfully.

"You can't imagine who I was before. This shy, awkward little thing from Georgia with a heart condition. Then I had the surgery." She lifted her foot, resting it on his stomach and he felt the narrow heel push down into his skin, against his diaphragm.

"I became freaking Xena, Warrior Princess," she said, smiling down at him, shifting her feet to either side of him and sitting over his hips, hands on his shoulders as she leaned forward.

"I couldn't dissect a frog in high school," she confided to him. "But sacrificing to Cacao?" Her hand curled around his neck, sliding over his cheek as she continued. "Better than sex."

She pulled the two sides of the plaid shirt apart, pushing them back and running her fingernail lightly over his chest. "So, if I go real slow, and take my time and enjoy this, I can actually show you your own beating heart before you die."

She set her fingers against his ribs, pushing down hard against the resistance of the curved bones protecting his heart, nails splitting through the cloth of his shirt, through the thin layer of skin and muscle.

Dean grunted as the fingers started to bend and split the bones, his face screwing up and teeth clenched, locking the scream in his throat down. He could feel his ribs being prised apart, the cartilage between them tearing as she pushed down harder.

Sam rose behind Hayes and swung the bottle in his hand, smashing it into the back of the man's head, glass and vodka flying out in a spray. As Hayes shuddered and turned, Sam slid the heavy knife along the left side of Dean's body, hidden in its shadow. He swung wildly at Hayes, drawing him off, and Dean flexed his arm, reaching down to the knife as Randa stared at the fight, her attention off him.

Closing his fingers around the hilt felt like someone had pushed a white-hot wire into his shoulder, the muscle damaged where Hayes' fingers had pushed deep. He ignored the pain and lifted the blade up, driving it into her abdomen, just under the breastbone, the tip angled up to penetrate the heart, eyes shut tight as he forced it deeper. Brilliant red light lit up her eyes as the wound seemed to fill with red fire, crackling and hissing and smoking around the embedded knife blade.

Randa looked down at Dean in disbelief as she felt the tip pierce her heart, staggering to her feet and backing slowly away, the wound was expanding, dissolving the strength of the god and eating at her, spreading out through her limbs and devouring her. The transplanted organ in Jimmy Tong vaporised in his abdomen, scorching through flesh and clothing and he dropped to the floor, dead. Paul Hayes' heart followed suit, and Sam watched as he fell at his feet.

On the stage, Randa gasped, her breaths getting shorter and shorter as her body was incinerated from within. She screamed as the light flared out, then fell as it died to nothing.

Sam stared down at his brother, lying on the stage. Dean rolled onto his shoulder, hand curved protectively over the torn flesh and aching bones in his chest, his head snapping up to check that Sam was alright, then thumping back onto the stage as he closed his eyes and waited for everything to calm down.

* * *

Dean looked at the suit sourly and folded it up, dragging the dry-cleaning over it as he shoved it back into the duffle. Was it just him, or did they seem to be wearing the goddamned things for more and more jobs? He zipped up the bag and set it on the end of the bed next to the gear bag, looking through that with a practised eye, checking that everything in it was clean, present and accounted for.

Sam glanced at him. "Sorry, tell me again why you want to stop off at the Holme's place?"

Dean exhaled softly and zipped up the gear bag. "Sam, stop making an issue of this. She deserves to know that it's finished, don't you think?"

"I'm not – yeah, that's something I'd do, think of," Sam looked at him. "Not something you would, necessarily."

"Gonna give me a medal?" He hid the small stab of pain at the comment with a grin. "Come on, I'm hungry, I wanna eat before we get too far out."

* * *

The kitchen had almost made him laugh. It was as full of marble and polished wood and ornate furniture as the rest of the rooms in the house. The coffee was good, though. He finished the cup, setting it down carefully on the marble-topped counter in front of him.

"Thanks. We better get going, uh ..." He glanced at Sam. "Just wanted you to know that it really is over now," he said, ignoring Sam's audible inhale beside him as Sam put down his cup as well.

Betsy nodded. "Well, it had to be, one way or the other," she said, looking at him. "I half-thought you might fail and Randa would come after me." She shrugged slightly. "Either way, I'd finally be at peace."

Dean saw something, a flash of expression or twitch or flinch cross her face, shadow her eyes for a brief second, there and gone. "You take care of yourself, Betsy," he said softly, the rebuke in his voice very, very faint.

Her eyes widened a little as she looked back at him, then he turned away, walking down the long hall to the front door.

* * *

_**I-25 N, Colorado**_

Dean was driving, the Impala purring along the road, speeding through the night again. Sam sat silently, looking through the windshield, feeling the energy running through his brother. It was, he guessed, better than seeing Dean in full depression, dragged down by despair and hopelessness. It would be better if it wasn't accompanied by the twitchy reactions, the nights waking and seeing him prowling along the windows of the rooms, checking their defences obsessively … he ran his fingers sharply through his hair, pushing it back from his face.

Dean glanced over at him as the gesture caught his peripheral vision. "Back in business. Got the win. Admit it – feels good, huh?" He ignored Sam's silence. "You know, I was thinking about what Betsy said about, uh, you know, Inyo and being a warrior, living for combat … I get it, man, I do."

Sam sighed softly. "I know. I know you do." He looked across at Dean. He did know. Dean was at his best when he had something to fight, someone to protect, to defend, something to pit his mind and body and heart against.

He looked back to the front. "I don't. Not anymore. Hell, maybe I never did."

He remembered being completely strung-out with the need to find the demon, after Jessica's murder. He remembered a similar blood-rage in himself when Dean had gone to Hell, to find and kill Lilith. He'd wanted to kill Lucifer, wanted to end that nightmare before it could ever begin. But since then … he was tired. And the rage that had powered all of those times had gone.

"Come on, Sam, don't ruin my buzz, would you?" Dean said entreatingly, knowing that the not-talk was over.

Sam shook his head. He needed to say it. Dean needed to hear it. At least once. Out in the open. On the table. "Dean, listen, when this is over – when we close up shop on Kevin and the tablet – I'm done." He looked at his brother. "I mean that."

"No, you don't."

Sam felt a flash of something that almost but not quite amusement at the instant denial. "Dean, the year that I took off, I had something I haven't had since college. A normal life. I mean, I got to see what that felt like. I want that," he looked at him, then looked away in self-realisation. "I _had_ that."

"I think that's just how you feel right now," Dean said, hating the patronising tone that had crept into his voice, unable to prevent it, not sure what it meant.

Sam looked away. The year that had gone by without Dean … without hunting, or killing or blood or salt or sulphur … he'd had a job. And a girlfriend. And a dog, a house, a garden, been to the movies, celebrated his birthday … and hers, had Thanksgiving and Christmas, maybe not Rockwell, either of them, but a damned sight closer than he'd seen in the last few years. He'd had clean clothes, kept in the same drawers, the same bed to sleep in, had cooked a good meal every night because Amelia's idea of cooking wasn't sufficient to feed anyone. He'd had swimming in the river in the summer, seeing live bands at their local bar on Saturday nights, going to an art gallery and spending the whole day there, reading – hell, _collecting_ books to read – whenever he'd felt like it.

He felt himself bursting with those memories, wanting to explain them to Dean, knowing that his brother would never understand them, his feelings about them, all those totally normal, trivial, self-indulgent, completely ordinary things that he'd loved.

"It's not just the way I feel right now, Dean," he said quietly.

Dean's fingers closed more tightly around the wheel.

"It's what I what my life to be."


	9. Chapter 9 Love Bites

**Chapter 9 Love Bites**

* * *

_**I-80 E, Nebraska**_

Dean rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. He'd been driving for seven hours, and he needed more food, more coffee, someplace to stop, to get out of the car, to get away from his brother.

Beside him, leaning against the window on the passenger side of the car, Sam was silent. The silence had started three hours ago, and would last until he said something, offered some kind of conversational hook to his brother, he knew. Sam's ability to withstand it was a lot better than his own, especially lately. He looked down at the stereo and pulled out the last tape, grabbing another one and pushing it in, without looking at what it was.

_Gunter glieben glauchen globen. _

_All riight. I got somethin' to say, yeah. It's better to burn out, yeah, than to fade away._

His mouth tucked in slightly at the corners, and he twisted the volume knob to the right, thumb tapping against the steering wheel as the music filled the car. He could feel Sam's sour sideways look at him, ignoring it. _Just like old times_, he thought with an inward grin of satisfaction. The long screech of a nail dragged up a string, the twist of the bass riff throbbing through the chassis into his feet, the music matched the pounding beat in his bloodstream, the one that hadn't gone away since he'd returned, the one that woke him up at night, feeling that they shouldn't be there, that they should keep moving, they needed to go, there was nowhere that was safe …and it took that heavy throb and lifted it up with the soaring chords, lightening his heart and giving the underlying savagery something to sing with.

The miles disappeared under the black car's wheels and as it rocketed along the road he could feel a very faint but growing sense of reconnection. With the car. With the road.

With himself.

* * *

_**Coralville, Iowa**_

Sam looked up as the door opened and Dean – he assumed it was his brother, since he couldn't see anything but a pair of legs and a pile of boxes – came in, extracting the key from the lock and kicking the door shut behind him. The boxes landed in a pile on side of the table.

"What's this?"

"Stuff," Dean said, dropping the key on the table and pulling off his jacket. "I had a look through the trunk and this is the stuff we used to have but I can't seem to find now," he added shortly.

Sam sighed, looking at the pile. Police scanner. A pair of throat mikes and earphones. A small digital video camera. He saw a hand-held black light on another box, "Great for Parties!", and a number of plain brown boxes marked simply "Components". Dean had cleaned out Radio Shack.

"It's at the cabin in Whitefish," Sam said. "I didn't need it anymore."

"Anything else up there that I should know about?"

"Bobby's library, and what we found of Rufus' journals." Dean wouldn't try and carry that amount of books around with them, he knew.

"Any way we can get those books into a format we can carry around easily?" Dean ripped open the top-most box and pulled out the scanner components.

"Yeah, if you're okay with us sitting around about a month while we scan them into a database, check that the OCR has reproduced them correctly, and write a bit of software so that we can search them easily," Sam said, leaning back in his chair.

"Huh," Dean sat down and disappeared behind the rest of the boxes.

"Didn't think so," Sam said softly.

"How's the search for Kevin coming along?"

"It's not."

"What's the problem?" His brother leaned out from behind the pile and looked at him.

"He's not an idiot and he's laid about ten false trails to cover every single real one."

"So no leads, then?"

"Didn't I just say that?" Sam looked at him irritably. "No, no leads."

"Okay."

* * *

Sam woke up to the sound of the shower running. He picked up his watch from the nightstand, squinting at the small glowing figures. Three-thirty. In the a.m. Dean's bed was empty, but it looked like his brother had been sleeping in it. The linen was in a tangled ball down the end, half-fallen to the floor. He looked at the closed bathroom door. Nightmare?

Pushing the covers back he got up, knocking once on the door before he opened it. Behind the glass screen, the shower was thundering down into the cubicle and from the lack of steam in the tiny room, Sam guessed that it was just cold water. He couldn't see a figure in there.

"Dean?"

Sam walked to the screen and saw him then, crouched down in the corner under the fall of water, dressed, by the looks of it, head tucked into his arms which were wrapped around his knees.

"Dean?" He opened the door and felt the icy spray from the shower, flipping off the flow and seeing that Dean was shivering uncontrollably, completely soaked through.

"Dean, what are you –"

He reached down to touch his shoulder and Dean's head snapped up, his eyes wide and dark and – _not seeing him_, Sam thought. It was the only thought he had time for as his brother jack-knifed to his feet, arm sweeping his own aside, the shower surround disintegrating as Dean threw himself at him, knocking him to the floor, one hand crushing his throat, the other raised in a fist above his face.

"Dean, it's me! Dean!" _Was he asleep?_ Sam looked up at him and saw the muscles in shoulder and chest tighten; lifted his forearm to try to block what was coming. He closed his eyes and turned his head away.

"Sam?"

His brother's weight on him was gone, and he looked up to see Dean pressed back against the far wall.

"Yeah, it's me," he said, coughing a little at the soreness of his throat. "What happened?"

Dean stood there, shivering from the cold that had returned, just looking at him.

"You have a nightmare?" Sam turned on the tap over the sink and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of water, feeling the cool water ease the pain immediately. "Dean?"

He looked obliquely into the mirror, watching Dean looking around, at the broken shower screen across the floor, at his own soaked clothing, the scrapes and cuts over his knuckles.

"Do you remember what happened?" Sam turned around slowly.

"I was asleep," Dean muttered.

"You had a dream," Sam said. "And came in here, turned on the shower and got under it."

Dean shook his head. "No."

Sam watched him look again at the soaked clothes, brows drawing together tightly as he took them in.

"I came in and you were under the water," he continued quietly. "When I tried to get you out, you came through the screen and knocked me to the floor."

Dean looked at the floor, shaking his head. "I-I –"

"You don't remember," Sam said.

_What the fuck was going on with him? A fugue state? Sleepwalking?_ He wasn't sure if it was a good idea to get closer to him.

"Dean, what do you remember?"

"I was asleep, I woke up and you were lying … there," Dean looked down at the floor again, his face screwed up with the image in his mind.

"Get dry, I'll get you some more clothes," Sam said, turning for the door and opening it.

"Sam, I –" Dean stood with his back against the wall, his face open and vulnerable.

"It's okay," Sam said, looking at him. "We're good."

He nodded uncertainly, his gaze dragged back to the broken shower, to the floor.

* * *

Sam looked around as he heard a mutter from the bed behind him.

"What time is it?" Dean asked, propped on one arm as he rubbed his eyes.

"Eight," Sam said. "How're you feeling?"

Dean looked at him, hand still over half his face. "Fine, why?"

Sam turned in the chair, brow wrinkling up. "Why? Because you had a nightmare last night and came within about an inch of killing me."

"What?" Dean's voice held that particular deep, disbelieving tone he usually reserved for denying adolescent impulses. "I was asleep the whole night, practically."

Sam smiled humourlessly. "Your clothes are still dripping in the bathroom. You had a nightmare and gave yourself a cold shower – fully dressed."

Something flickered in his brother's eyes, too fast to see. Dean got out of the bed and walked barefoot to the bathroom, opening the door and staring in.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I woke up and you were in the shower. Dressed. Cold water turned on full. I tried to get you out and you came through the shower screen like a – a – commando, knocked me to the floor and –" He stopped.

"And what?" Dean turned back to him.

"I thought you were going to kill me," Sam finally said bluntly. He lifted his chin. The handprint bruised into the skin was clearly visible. "I don't think you were conscious when you were doing it."

Dean walked slowly over to him, looking at the mark around Sam's throat. He frowned as a flicker of memory came and went, too fast to make out. He looked back at the bathroom. His clothes were in there, wet and dripping from what remained of the frame that had surrounded the shower cubicle.

He sat down in the chair opposite his brother. "I don't remember that."

"Yeah, I know," Sam said.

Dean looked down at the table, his face shuttered. It had to have been a nightmare, he thought uneasily. Something he'd been trying to wake up from? To block out? He didn't know. He could feel Sam's eyes on him, worry radiating out from his little brother like heat from a fire. Probably fair enough. The bruising was dark, and clear. He'd obviously been putting a lot of pressure on. He felt his stomach roil and shunted the image that appeared in his mind away.

"Well, a nightmare, I guess," he said, looking up at Sam.

"Yeah," Sam agreed readily. "About what, Dean?"

"I don't remember." That was true enough, although he knew all the contenders. "I'll, uh, it'll be fine."

"Dean."

He looked up. "I'll get something, Sam. To help me sleep, okay? It'll be fine."

Sam watched his expression tighten, saw the decision made. He let out his breath. Maybe it would. Until the next time.

"You find anything?" Dean looked at the open laptop on the table.

"Maybe," Sam said, glancing back at the screen. "I was looking through flagged cold cases on the feds database. There might be something in Dexter."

"Dexter … where?"

"Dexter, Michigan."

* * *

_**Dexter, Michigan**_

Sam brought up the case photographs. "It's old, alright? From 2001."

Dean leaned on the table, eyes narrowed as he looked at the pictures that Sam scrolled through. Four victims in four weeks. All the bodies intact, except that their hearts were missing. The coroner's reports had indicated that the hearts had been removed without the use of a blade, by force alone.

"Werewolf," he said, looking at Sam.

"I'd agree … except for the dates," Sam agreed, bringing up the police report. "The first vic was found the day after the full moon, no arguments, good for the werewolf. But the next three were a week apart from that date. The moon was waning to half, quarter then the last vic was attacked on the dark phase."

"Not a werewolf," Dean looked around and dragged the other chair over, sitting down. "What else takes the heart?"

Sam smiled. "Nine-hundred year old Mayan god-buddies. Skinwalkers. A witch might, if it was for a spell, though I'm guessing they'd probably use a knife."

Dean nodded, running a hand over his jaw. "Yeah, alright. Back to the suits."

He looked at his duffle bag irritably.

"I don't know that we're going to get much help from the police on a case this old, Dean."

"We ask to see the files. There might be something in there, something they missed."

* * *

Dean fiddled with the scanner, leaning back in the chair at the table. The files had been the same as the ones Sam had already found. Nothing new. Something had been here, had killed four people, taken their hearts and disappeared. And hadn't reappeared.

"Kilo Alpha Tango One Four Seven, what's your twenty, over?"

"Dispatch, Kilo Alpha Tango One Four Seven, location corner of Seventeenth Street and Maple, over."

"Ten-four, Kilo Alpha Tango One Four Seven, ten-forty-nine Block One, Seventeenth Street, rear of the building. Resident called about a ten-fifty-four."

"Ten-four, Dispatch, out."

Dean sat up and looked at the scanner. A few minutes later it crackled into life again.

"Dispatch. Kilo Alpha Tango One Four Seven, I have a possible ten-ninety-one attack, Seventeenth Street, Block One. Eleven-forty-four and require a team to that location, over."

"Ten-four, Kilo Alpha Tango One Four Seven, there is a team en route to your location. Coroner advised. Please advise status of ten-ninety-one attack. Do you require a ten-ninety-one-golf, over?"

"Dispatch, negative on ten-ninety-one-golf. Animal has gone. I cannot advise status of ten-ninety-one at this time," the voice on the scanner was shaking. "Ten-fifty-five will also be required, and Patty, get hold of Doc Reynolds ASAP, over."

"Ten-four, Kilo Alpha Tango One Four Seven, out."

Dean looked at the scanner, then at Sam. "Did you hear that?"

"It's an animal attack, Dean, could be anything."

"That cop didn't sound like he'd seen anything like it before," Dean said, getting up and dragging his suit jacket back on. "Come on, we'll take a look. He called the coroner and I guess the doc's the local medical examiner so it wasn't a straight case of missing throat action either."

Sam sighed and got up.

* * *

Dean looked around as he turned into the rear driveway. Place was a circus.

"I hate college towns," he said sourly, pulling up and turning off the engine.

"Thought you loved college towns." Sam glanced at him, seeing the tension was back. "All the girls."

"I hate college towns when there's a murder," Dean clarified. "Kids all turn into ghouls and idiots." He got out and looked at the scene, ducking under the crime-scene tape and pulling out his badge. On both sides of the scene, there were students, or residents or gawkers, a couple with video cameras, for god's sake.

He looked at the body, chastely covered by a broad white cloth, blood seeping through from the wound that was, naturally, in the centre of the chest. Scanning the faces that surrounded them, he felt his instincts prickle slightly at the avid look on some of those faces. Chance to be on the nightly news, he wondered or to see the handiwork of the night before.

Ahead of them, a man in a brown suit looked up and walked over, the flat, grey light gleaming on a hairless pate.

"Special Agent Rose, and this is Special Agent Hudson," Sam said.

"Detective Young. What the hell are you guys doing here?"

Dean looked around. "Our jobs. You want to tell us what's going on?"

"Got a call from a woman that lives upstairs," Young looked from Dean to Sam curiously. "Said she heard an attack, came down, found her neighbour here. Name of Jacob Carter, student."

"Is the witness still home?" Sam followed Young to the body.

"Sure is. She's … uh, not the most reliable type. She said she heard some kind of growl, like there was a coyote down here." Young looked down at the body. "Wasn't a coyote, I can tell you that. Coyotes are scavengers, they'll eat the hands and feet, go for the soft organs that are easy to get to – they don't start breaking through rib-cages."

"And it's just the heart that's missing?" Dean's glance flickered along the watching crowd, picking out the two kids holding their cameras right on them. He'd wait for the autopsy to look at the body.

Young nodded. "Just the heart."

"Awesome."

Sam looked at him. "I'll take the witness. You going with the body?"

He nodded and tossed Sam the car keys. "Yeah, I'll meet you at the coroner's office."

* * *

Sam climbed the stairs to the apartment of Marlee Adams, Jacob Carter's worried neighbour. He knocked on the door and stepped back a little when it opened and a gust of gin-flavoured air wafted out.

"Ms Adams?" He looked at her, ducking his head a little to meet her wandering gaze. "I'm Special Agent Rose, of the FBI. I'd just like to ask you a couple of questions about your neighbour, Mr Carter."

Marlee lifted her head. She was, Sam thought, in her late twenties, but it was hard to tell because the alcohol had already taken a toll on her skin and hair, drying them out. Dark brown hair, unwashed and unbrushed, fell back from her face and the blue eyes were bloodshot, ringed by deep purple shadows.

"Jacob?" She looked past into the hall. "He died. There was a noise – I don't know what it was, sounded like a horror movie or something out there – but it wasn't human, I can tell you that for sure."

Sam kept his face neutral. "What time was that, Ms Adams?"

"Last night, early this morning. Before it got light," she said, leaning against the doorframe. "I couldn't sleep." She looked away and her face crumpled up slightly.

"I can't sleep mostly, most nights," she started again. "And I was nearly out of cigarettes, which makes me kind of anxious, especially if it's a holiday or sometime when the stores aren't going to be open for a while, and I was looking at the window, wondering when the sun would come up –" She leaned forward to him and almost fell, her foot sliding out in time to keep her upright. He watched her straighten up without acknowledging the near-faceplant.

"Jacob screamed – just once. And there was this noise. This growling noise," she glanced back into the single studio apartment behind her. "You ever watch the Discovery channel?"

"Yeah, sometimes," Sam said uncertainly. "Why?"

"I watch it a lot. I know the sounds wild animals make when they – when they – when they're eating. This noise sounded like that." She closed her eyes.

"Uh, thank you, Ms Adams, that's been very helpful," Sam said, taking a step back. "If we need anything else, we'll come by."

"Yeah," she murmured softly. "Always here, between midnight and midday, seven days a –" She looked up and turned around and the door closed behind her.

Not the world's most reliable witness, he thought, turning to head back down the stairs, but what she'd heard had been interesting. He came out of the building through the rear door and looked around. The body had gone, and with it, his brother, and the bystanders had finally disappeared as well. The crime-scene tape still fluttered in the wind that came around the corner of the big block and he turned along the wall, looking carefully at the ground, at the wall, and at the greenery that crowded close to the far end of the building, trees and shrubs and bushes all a perfect hiding spot for something that was waiting to feed.

* * *

Sam drove into the parking lot behind the coroner's office and pulled into a vacant slot beside the door. He got out and walked to the door, almost running into Dean as the door was pulled open and his brother walked through it.

"Good timing," Dean said, sidestepping him as if he'd been expecting it and walking straight to the car, hand held out behind him.

"That was fast," Sam tossed the keys and watched Dean catch them without looking, opening the driver's door and getting in.

"Doc Reynolds is backed up today, apparently three people in the old folk's home got food poisoning last night. He'll do the autopsy on the kid in the morning," Dean said, yawning.

"Well, our not-so-reliable witness was pickled," Sam got into the passenger side as the engine started. "But she watches the Discovery channel and she knows what a wild animal sounds like when it's eating."

Dean's mouth tucked in at the corners. "Does she?"

"Yeah, doesn't narrow it down much."

"We need to check the people in that neighbourhood, see if anyone heard anything." Dean twisted around to back the car out. "Or if we get any vibes from anyone."

"Seems like mostly kids living off campus around here," Sam said, looking at the big houses and small apartment blocks. "Try the college for a list of addresses first?"

"Yeah, and the students. Someone must have known something about Carter."

* * *

The wide halls of the administration building were surprisingly busy and the suits garnered them more curious looks than Dean felt comfortable with. Intellectually, he knew they couldn't get the information they needed without the damned things. Emotionally, he wanted to burn the two he owned and be comfortable again.

He dodged another group of students and almost walked into an older man heading up toward him, fair head bent over a thick sheaf of papers he held in one hand, several heavy books tucked under the other arm. Dean felt a sharp prickle on the back of his neck as he sidestepped adroitly to avoid the man and looked back at him for a second. What had that been, he wondered?

He stood to one side of the office, half-listening to his brother haggling with the dean over the privacy issues of the students versus the jurisdiction of the government to get answers on a possible homicide case, repressing the urge to pull out his gun and shoot the obnoxious paper-pusher, and thinking around the issue that had been hiding in the back of his mind since he'd looked into the bathroom back in Iowa and seen the shattered shower screen and his clothes dripping onto the floor.

He couldn't take the pills he'd picked up. They dulled everything down so far he felt like a zombie, even after he'd been awake for a couple of hours. He figured that his compromise, sleeping about an hour in every four, was a reasonable solution. It didn't let him get down to a dream-state, not really, and he was still able to function at full power through the day. He felt his jaw tighten as he stopped another yawn.

Sam turned away from the man with an air of triumph and Dean nodded to the man coldly as he turned and followed him out of the office. They waited while the secretary pulled out the two lists and walked out, retracing their steps back down to the parking lot.

"Where do you want to start?"

Dean shrugged. It was almost dark. "Let's get something to eat, then we'll start on campus. We can door-to-door tomorrow and give the doc some time to get through his surplus."

Sam nodded, getting back into the car. He saw Dean yawn as he started the engine and thought about the bottle of pills sitting untouched on the nightstand in the motel room. Of waking and seeing Dean's face lit up by the screen of the laptop. There was nothing he could do about it, except try to sleep lightly himself.

* * *

Dean looked around sharply at the scrape of a shoe over the asphalt surface. Beyond the lit area of the college's indoor sports building, the shadows filled the spaces between the mature trees. He stared at the nearest, watching a leaf trembling on a sucker growing from the base of the trunk. There wasn't so much as a slight breeze to cause that tremble.

He started to turn toward the tree as Sam finished up with the two students.

"Alright, there is not a –" Sam started to say, and he turned back, cutting him off.

"There is a case here. You're rusty. We just got to dig a little deeper, come on."

He ignored his brother's deep sigh and walked back to the car, forgetting about the trembling leaf. He could feel the case. He didn't need to justify that feeling to Sam.

* * *

"Dean?" Sam propped himself onto his elbow as he saw his brother pacing along the wall of the room, the curtains partially pulled shut but the lights from the street still coming through enough to see by.

"Yeah?"

"What's going on?"

He heard Dean's deep exhale. "I can't take the pills. They make me too dopey."

"All right, but why aren't you sleeping?"

"Don't want to wake up in the shower," Dean said lightly.

"What happened to you?" Sam sat up, staring at his outline against the backlit motel curtains. "What's eating at you?"

"Sam … I can't … talk about that," Dean stopped moving and stood by the foot of his bed. "You want me to stop having nightmares? Then leave it alone. They'll stop coming when I stop thinking about it."

"That's not how it works," Sam said tiredly.

"It is for me, just let it go, man."

"This is exactly why we're here, Dean," Sam said in exasperation. "We used to talk about this stuff." _Some of the time_, he amended silently.

He saw a pale gleam of white as Dean grinned. "No, we didn't, not much." _And what little I did tell you about, you threw back at me, used it to stab me whenever you weren't in control_, he added in his mind. _So no, Sam, I'm not going to talk about it, not with you_.

"How do you think we're ever going to be able to keep working together if you won't trust me?"

"C'mon, Sammy," Dean sat on the end of his bed. "Working together is how we built the trust in the first place."

"No. It's not," Sam said. "Look, I know I shouldn't talk about trust, okay? I know that what I did, my mistakes, ended up wrecking the trust we had more than anything else."

_Mistakes?_ Dean closed his eyes. He didn't want to go there. Not tonight. Not ever.

"Sam, that's done. All right? That's gone." He looked at him, barely able to make out his brother's outline. "We're just starting again, okay?"

Sam heard the deep weariness in his voice, and stopped the retort that rose. Starting again. Was this the third or fourth time they'd tried it?

"All right," he said. He dropped back to the pillows behind him and rolled over. Dean watched him for a long moment, then rubbed his eyes. He could probably catch an hour now.

* * *

Dean climbed the steps to the porch, following Sam. This was block two, he thought tiredly. Sam's patter had become entirely predictable. He stood behind and a little to one side of him as the door opened and a kid looked out.

"Hi, there," Sam said, pasting on a smile.

"Hi," the dark-haired kid said automatically, looking up.

"Special Agents Rose and Hudson." He lifted his ID and Dean pulled his out, holding it up and putting it back. "We wanted to ask you a few questions about the murder that occurred a few blocks from here. Did you know the victim, Jacob Carter?"

Brian glanced at Dean. "Um, no, not really."

"Do you remember anything unusual about that night?" Dean asked automatically.

"Not that I recall," Brian said, his expression a little worried.

"Right. Have there been any reports in the neighbourhood of dog attacks? Or pets disappearing?"

"Uh, pardon me?"

"Humour me." Sam looked at him patiently.

"No, I-I don't think so."

The kid thought they were both nuts, Dean thought. And since when did a bunch of kids living together in a house notice what was happening in the neighbourhood? He looked around the other houses on the street. They needed a neighbourhood full of retirees to get the low down on what happened every day. Every minute.

"All right." Sam nodded. "Thanks for your time. If you hear anything strange... call us." He pulled a small white card from his wallet and handed it to the kid. "No matter how late," he added.

Brian looked at the card and nodded, and Dean repressed a smile at the image of the card fluttering into a trash can before they were even back in the car.

"Thank you," Brian said nervously, as he closed the door.

"So, what do you think?" Dean turned to his brother, one brow raised.

"Well, based on what we've got so far, we could be dealing with another Mayan god," Sam looked at his notes.

Dean smiled, looking down at the car. "Ah, that's fantastic, 'cause the other one was such a joy."

"Yeah. The timing is what's screwy on this," Sam followed his gaze. "Otherwise, I'd be inclined to agree with your first assessment."

"Yeah. Well," he started to walk down the steps. "We've still got to talk to the coroner."

Sam nodded, following him down to the street. They needed knowledge, lore, information. He hadn't realised how much they'd depended on Bobby being on the other end of a phone line to call and ask about the weird ones that came up. Their father had kept a journal – all the old-timers had – he wondered if he should be doing that as well, just writing down every case they handled, everything they found out, so that at least they had something to look through. He thought of what he'd told Dean about putting Bobby's library into a database. Might be a job he could do bit by bit, after they found Kevin, of course.

* * *

The scanner crackled and Dean looked up, chewing the burrito faster.

"Dispatch, this is Foxtrot Golf Delta Two Fiver Zero, we have another ten-ninety-one. Ten-fifty-five, over."

"Ten-four, Foxtrot Golf Delta Two Fiver Zero, what's your twenty, over?"

"Dispatch, we're on campus, eastern parking lot. Twenty yards from the edge of the lot, over."

"Ten-four, Foxtrot Golf Delta Two Fiver Zero, ten-fifty-five on their way, out."

Sam pushed his food aside and stood up, pulling on the suit jacket from the back of his chair. Dean looked down at the half-eaten burrito and sighed, getting up and hooking his jacket from the back of his chair as he followed Sam out of the room.

Detective Young turned around as they came under the tape.

"Figured I'd see you guys again," he said.

"Well, if you did your job right, we wouldn't be here," Dean remarked. Sam shot him a look and he turned away, looking down at the body.

"Alright, what have you got?" Sam interjected.

Detective Young gestured down to the body on the ground. "His name is Scott Parker, looks like the same thing that killed the Carter kid got Mr Parker here."

"The same _thing_?" Sam asked, looking at him curiously. _Thing_ seemed a stretch for a cop.

"Look, I-I-I'm only the local yokel," Young said, holding up his hands helplessly. "But this kid was shredded … by an animal." He glanced from Sam to Dean and looked at the body again, taking a few steps back.

"Where's his heart?" Dean said abruptly.

"Patrolman found it, up the way there," Young waved at the path that ran through the trees. "Eaten, mostly."

"Show us." Dean looked at the path.

"Yeah, yeah, okay," Young said, and led them away from the body. Dean felt Sam's gaze on him and ignored it. It was a case, a heart-snatching-and-eating case. And he wanted whatever what doing it.

* * *

The Coroner's Office was a low brick building a couple of blocks from the police station. Dean waited at the counter for someone to appear, finally turning and walking down the corridor when it seemed whoever was supposed to be manning the front desk had gone AWOL. He opened the first door he came to.

"I'm looking for Doc Reynolds?"

The two paramedics standing by the coffee machine looked at each other. "He's down in the morgue, last door on the right."

"Thanks." He shut the door and kept walking.

The last door on the right opened into a wide, clean room, two stainless steel autopsy tables, floor-to-ceiling cupboards and beyond there a cold room with a thick, steel door.

The old man who looked up as he came in was scowling at him. "Gloves and mask, goddammit!"

"You Doc Reynolds?" Dean ignored the scowl, looking around the room.

"That's me. Who're you?" Reynolds said truculently, his hands and arms red to the elbow as he lifted them out of the cavity and waited.

"Special Agent Hudson, sir," Dean said, looking at them. "I'm here about the, uh, animal attacks."

"Judy's taking care of them, across the hall, son," the doctor said, looking back down and gathering up the kidney he'd just freed.

"Judy. Right. Thanks," Dean stepped back and closed the door. He turned around and went to the door opposite. It was another autopsy room, smaller though. A small woman was stripping off her gloves and dropping them into a trash can when he looked inside.

"Ah, Doc said Judy was doing the posts on the animal attacks?"

"Just finished," she said, going to the sink. "Your interest?"

"FBI. Special Agent Hudson," Dean said, walking into the room.

"Got some identification?" She dried her hands on a paper towel, turning back to him.

He walked to her, pulling out his badge, brows rising as she took it from him and looked closely at it. It appeared to satisfy her, though. She handed it back.

"What did you want to know?"

"Uh, everything, I guess," he said, looking at the body on the table.

"Cause of death was a missing heart," Judy walked to the door, taking her jacket off the hook beside it and shrugging it on. "Everything else looked normal and present."

"Cop said he'd been shredded," Dean commented, following her out and down the hallway.

"That Frank Young? He exaggerates everything. Got a hangnail and thought his finger was falling off," she said dryly, opening the rear door to the parking lot. "I've got about five minutes to get myself a sandwich before I have to get back into it."

"Uh, okay." He stopped next to her outside the building. "How was the heart taken?"

"The skin was cut, pulled back from the breastbone. Breastbone was broken and the ribs pulled aside. Heart was torn out, not cut free," Judy looked up at him.

"But the cuts – was a blade used?" Dean frowned.

"Cut marks on both vics are clean but have the curvature of animal claws. I don't know. I mean, maybe there's a wild animal on the loose? Biggest animal in the county is a raccoon." She looked up at Dean apologetically. "Those claws were long, at least four inches, by the single swipe measurement I got. But you know, you hear about big predators being kept privately by people, let go when they can't afford to feed them, or just escaping. That's about the only theory I've got."

"Yeah, uh. Thank you for your time," he said, shaking her hand and turning away. Some loose animal that preferred open heart surgery. No.

He looked up as Sam crossed the parking lot, heading for him.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"So, what did I miss? Anything?" he asked, looking from his brother to the rear door and back.

"Not unless you want to put an APB out on Rocky Raccoon," Dean said sourly. "Heart was removed by curved claws, according to Judy, assistant coroner. Long claws, but no animals larger than a racoon in this county."

Sam shook his head. "Great. What now?"

"Time to hit the books and feed the monster," Dean said, turning away to look for the car.

"What books are we talking about? The half-dozen in the trunk?"

"Santos used to have a good library," Dean said, remembering the rooms full of books in the old house in New Mexico.

"Didn't Bobby say he died – leviathans got him last year?"

"His daughter might still be alive."

"Might. Right."

* * *

The cafeteria was a high-ceilinged room with booths along the outside wall and a mix of large and small tables across the floor. Sam walked down to a small table far enough away from the students to be somewhat private.

Dean looked around. _Not a single person under thirty in here_, he thought, _except for us. And this is what Sam wanted?_ He sat down with his back to the wall and his field of view encompassing the entire room.

"These are the only books we have on hand that have anything to do with lycanthropes," Sam said, passing him a thick tome and a battered, leather-bound journal. "The journal is one of Rufus'."

Dean flipped it open and started to read as Sam put another heavy book on the table.

"What're you studying?" The waitress might've been a little older than the rest, Dean thought, looking up.

"Uh …," he said, smiling as his mind blanked out.

"Ancient history," Sam supplied, closing the book as he took the menu.

"Two burgers, fries," Dean said, shutting the journal.

"Nice suit," she added to him with a smile. He nodded and looked back down at the journal under his hand. Sam lifted an eyebrow and handed her back the menu.

"And a cob salad, thanks," he said, glancing at his brother again when she turned and walked away. Dean had opened the journal and was reading again, head bowed over the page.

"We're getting nowhere, fast." Sam pulled out a handful of papers from the file in his bag and shuffled through them. Copies of police reports. Copies of coroner's reports, autopsy reports, tox screen reports. There was nothing in them that they didn't already know.

Dean looked up at him. "Takes time, Sam."

"We're supposed to be looking for Kevin, you remember that?" Sam said moodily.

"Yeah. I remember," Dean looked back at the journal, skimming over the hunts that didn't match up with what they had. He hadn't been through this one before, he realised, stopping every now and then and smiling inwardly at Rufus' particular turns of phrase. He'd have to read it thoroughly when he had the chance.

The waitress came up to the table and they looked up, closing the books and files and pushing them to one side as she set down their plates.

"Awesome. Thank you," Dean looked at the burgers, his stomach rumbling.

Sam leaned back a little as she put his salad in front of him. "Thanks." He looked at Dean's plate. "Dude, two burgers?"

"Hey, I didn't eat at Big P's for like a year, okay?" Dean picked one up and looked over at Sam defensively. "Clear eyes and clogged arteries – can't lose." He took a bite.

"Talk about the sounds wild animals when they're eating," Sam muttered to himself, picking up his fork and stabbing it into the salad.

Dean closed his eyes, focussing his attention on what it all tasted like. Despite the fact that he'd never felt hungry down there, he'd come back topside a bit lighter than he'd gone down. The constant running and fighting might have had something to do with that too, he thought dryly. He wondered how Benny was finding it, the need to eat, to sleep, to rest. Wondered uneasily what his friend was feeding on. They hadn't heard anything but it was a big country. He pushed the thought away, knowing that it would lead to more thoughts that he didn't want to entertain.

He opened his eyes as he finished the first burger and reached for the second. Sam's gaze had cut away, back to the book open beside his elbow, but Dean had felt it on him anyway. He wanted to know about Purgatory. Wanted to know about the changes he'd seen in his brother. Wanted to know what had happened and what it meant. He sighed inwardly. _Let's see, how to summarise in fifty words or less …_ within the first five minutes, Cas had disappeared and he'd spent the next two months – or it might have three or four, it'd been hard to tell – hacking and torturing his way through various monsters, trying to find him. After a while the torturing part had felt kind of familiar, strangely … safe. Then he'd met a vampire who'd promised him a way out. And despite starting off all surly and mistrustful, he'd found the vampire to be a damned good backup, and then a necessary friend. He'd found Cas, and lost him again, and discovered that everything he'd learned and felt and done in Hell hadn't gone at all, it'd just been buried, waiting for the opportune moment to come roaring out again.

He stopped chewing, staring down at the table, feeling his stomach twitch as the memories pressed closer. He swallowed and pushed them back. More than fifty words. Fail.

He looked at the burger, and took another bite. It stayed down, hunger more powerful than the memories for the moment, anyway. He'd known it back there, that he wasn't going to be able to tell his brother about what had happened, what he'd done. He'd also known that it would fuck up their already shaky foundations, those lies, those omissions. There was nothing he could do about that.

He looked at the journal and pushed it aside. Rufus hadn't hunted a werewolf that could buck the lunar cycle. He opened the large book next to it, instead, burying himself in werewolf lore as he ate.

Sam heard the fork scrape at the bottom of the glass bowl and looked up. It was empty. A shadow passed beside him and he raised his head, seeing the waitress' smile as she collected the empty plates.

"Alright, this is a bust," Sam said, shutting the book. "Everything in here, we already know."

Dean looked at him, head resting against his hand and nodded. "Plan B."

"Call Mariana?" Sam's mouth twisted up. "You got a number, even?"

"Got three," Dean said, pulling his phone from his pocket and scrolling through the address book. He punched it in and listened for a moment. "Ringing."

He handed it to Sam as it was picked up.

"_¡Hola_, Mariana?" Sam grimaced at his brother as he heard a woman's voice at the end of the line. "_Si, este es Samuel … uh, Winchester. Si, si_."

Dean grinned at him.

"_Mi hermano? No, no, no lo he visto desde hace años. Sí, él es un idiota_," he looked at Dean and made a face.

"Mariana, we need some information, from the library of your father. _Sí_, I am sorry for your loss. About werewolves. _Sí_."

He covered the end of the phone as he waited, looking at Dean. "You slept with her?"

Dean sat back, trying to remember if he had. "No. Possibly. I can't remember."

"You know, there are a lot of –" Sam stopped as Mariana came back on the line. "_Sí, gracias_, Mariana. We're, uh, _estamos buscando a un hombre lobo que se puede cazar en cualquier parte del ciclo?_"

"Okay, hang on, I need to write this down," he said, grabbing a piece of paper and gesturing to Dean for a pen. Dean looked at him and shook his head disbelievingly.

"A what?" Sam reached down to the leather satchel at his feet, and rummaged through it until he found a stub of a pencil, pulling it out and writing fast on the back of the police report. "Yeah, I got that. _Si, sí, gracias_. Anything else?"

"Is there more than one source for this, Mariana? _Si_, yeah, I remember," he said, writing another set of notes. "Don't black out, _sí _… what about the vulnerability – uh, _la debilidad_? Still silver, good, _gracias, muchas gracias_, Mariana."

He finished writing and looked at his brother as he listened, holding the phone slightly away from his ear as the volume from the other end increased. "_Sí, si yo nunca lo volvería a ver, voy a decirle que. Gracias_."

He cut the call and handed the phone back to Dean.

"What was the last bit?" Dean asked, not sure he wanted to know. It hadn't sounded like a compliment.

"She thinks you're a dick," Sam said acerbically. "Alright, Santos had a lot of stuff about werewolves. She found this in the oldest book, written in the fourteen hundreds. The first human to be turned by the goddess' firstborn – which would be the Alpha – is considered a pureblood and the founder of a distinct and unique line. Purebloods, and the werewolves created over the first four generations of the pureblood, have significantly more control over the aspects of the curse than later generations."

"What kind of control?" Dean tried to read his brother's notes upside-down.

"These creatures can transform at any stage of the lunar cycle, and are not governed by the bloodlust that characterises those made later in the line. They must take a heart, for the heart is the symbol of life, essential to the continuation of the line. It does not have to be a human heart, however; the hearts of animals can sustain the pureblood or its descendents as well. The pureblood can control their impulses, making them extremely difficult to find and thus kill."

"You wrote that down word for word?" Dean stared at him. "Alright, so a purebred is a werewolf turned by the Alpha and it can control itself – and it passes that on to the people it turns for – what? – four generations."

"Yeah. It can be killed by silver like any other werewolf. To the heart," Sam read back what he'd written.

"Reassuring, since we don't have anything else on hand," Dean said, leaning back in his chair. "Told you there was a case here. Now we just got to find it and kill it."

"The first killing was in 2001, Dean. This is a college town, people come and go all the time, how the hell are we going to be able to find this thing?"

"One killing in 2001 then nothing till now. So maybe it's been living off of animal hearts, and recently got a sudden urge for human again. So whoever it is, they stayed," Dean said, drumming his fingers on the tabletop as he pieced it together. "County'll have records of residents who became permanent, won't they?"

"Maybe, if they bought. We can check against the census database, same occupancy." Sam chewed on his lip, thinking about it. "Utilities records will be the quickest. We'll start with those."

"Right."

"County and the utility offices'll be closed until morning," Sam looked at his watch.

"Well, we'll have to pay them an unofficial visit. We can't wait till morning," Dean said, stacking the journal on top of the book and getting up. He pulled his suit jacket on and picked them up. "Let's go."

* * *

They got back to the motel just after midnight. Sam dumped the printouts onto the table and made a fresh pot of coffee.

Sam checked the property records, while Dean went through the electricity accounts. It took two hours to narrow down the same names repeating in both piles.

"How many?" Dean looked up at him. "I got six."

"Same here," Sam rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. "We'll start with the closest residences to the campus."

Dean looked out the window, seeing nothing, the blackness making the glass a mirror inside. He wondered if he'd just gone wandering around the campus grounds over the last couple whether he'd have drawn an attack. _One bite up here_, he thought. Sam wouldn't have agreed. Might have saved on all the reading.

* * *

"Professor … Gordon Atbody," Dean read from the list. They needed to see this dude, then one other chick, and then they were out of options again. He walked along the corridor, glancing into the open office doors as he passed them.

The sound smashing furniture caught their attention and they ran for the office ahead of them, Sam shouldering through the door and sending a shower of glass across the floor.

"Hey!"

The man was standing in the corner of the room, reaching up and into the top shelf of a bookcase, pulling at something. Dean and Sam caught his arms and yanked him back from the shelf, tossing him onto the desk top and releasing him as he slid along the surface and fell to the floor at the end.

The noise that came out of his throat was human, but only just, a deep-chested rolling growl that grew as he scrambled to his feet and hunched over, the muscles over his back and shoulders straining against the white shirt he wore. Dean reached out to grab his arm and was thrown backward into a built-in, glass-fronted bookcase, and Sam felt himself lifted and shoved backward with ease into the opposite wall, his elbow going through another pane of glass. A hand closed around his throat and he felt the prick of the claws breaking through the end of the fingers, stabbing into the side of his neck as the creature forced him back and up the wall. Behind him, Dean got to his feet, shaking off the glass and lifting the Colt into a two-handed grip.

The shot was loud in the small space, the werewolf dropping Sam and falling to his knees, a small red stain in the centre of his chest growing and spreading as he looked down.

"Thank you," he said softly, then hit the floor.

"Never killed a pureblood before," Dean said, looking at the body, then wondered if that was true. In Purgatory he hadn't been asking for pedigrees.

Sam leaned back against the wall for a moment, feeling the new bruises rising over the old ones. He looked around the room absently, his gaze stopping and sharpening when it reached the corner they'd found the professor in. "What was he looking at?"

He strode across the room, ignoring the crunch of glass and wood under his feet. The round black lens was easily visible to someone looking for it.

"What the hell?" He reached up and pulled it free.

"What it is?" Dean came around the other side of the desk, seeing the camera in his brother's hand. "He was under surveillance? By who?"

"I don't know, but we're gonna find out," Sam said, tucking the camera into his jacket and looking around the office. "What do you want to do about this?"

"Leave it to the cops," Dean shrugged. "We got it, it's over."

Sam touched the camera lightly. "Maybe not. Come on."

* * *

Sam sat at the table with a magnifying glass, looking over every square inch of the camera. He couldn't see anything etched, scored, written or painted on it anywhere. The serial number had traced back to an online store which hadn't kept its record straight.

On the other side of the table, Dean unpacked his electronics boxes, assembling a new electro-magnetic field meter, with a set of micro-tools that had been unpacked from another box. The unit squawked once as he turned it on, then settled back to silence, the digital read-out reading zero point zero. He set it aside, and pulled the box containing the ultraviolet light toward him. It was just a wand, really, a long narrow tube with a cord attached to one end. He looked around for a socket, and plugged it in.

"Unbelievable," Sam said softly, smiling.

"What?" Dean looked up from the socket.

"He used a fluorescent marker," Sam held up the camera. On the side, a name and address glowed blue in the ultraviolet light.

Dean looked at it. "Brian Wilcox. Didn't we go to that house?"

"Yep," Sam said, getting up.

"Hey!" Dean flicked off the UV light. "No "_gee it's lucky you went and replaced all our old gear, Dean_"?"

Sam looked at him, dimples deepening. "No."

* * *

The two-storey house wasn't markedly different from any of the others along the street. The neighbourhood might've been more family-oriented once, but was now pretty much dedicated to student off-campus accommodation, easily discerned from the bedsheets used as curtains, and the beer cans that filled the trash cans in the front yards.

223 was silent when they came up the steps to the porch. Two bicycles leaned against the side of the house near the driveway, both spotted with rust from being left out. The windows were closed, the sheer curtains drawn.

Sam knocked at the door and waited. There was no movement on the street either, Dean thought, looking around. All either at jobs or in class. Sam knocked again, more loudly.

"Kick it," Dean said, moving to one side to cover his brother as Sam slammed his foot into the door just above the lock. It swung open and they moved inside, guns drawn, safeties off. Music played quietly from the living room.

Sam covered the rooms on the right and centre, Dean checked the rooms to the left and went upstairs fast, checking the bedrooms and bathroom before coming down again.

"Whoa," Sam said softly, looking into the living room. He walked to the nearest body, the one that had been covered, and nudged it with his foot.

Dean glanced around the room, noting the blood spray over the walls, the bodies, one covered by a sheet, the other out in the open on the floor. The music in the living room was still playing, some current song he'd never heard of before. He looked around and saw the square black box, the iPod sticking out the top and glowing. Pulling it out, he looked back to Sam, crouched beside the covered body.

"Rest of the place is clear."

Sam glanced up at him. "Yeah. Uh... no ID on this one. And uh... no clue who is painted on the walls." He looked around the room.

"Well, whatever happened, looks like we missed it," Dean said, turning around.

"Yeah. Great." Sam got to his feet. "Wait a sec."

He pointed to a long desk with two chairs near it, against the other wall. On the crowded surface a half-open laptop shed a little blue light onto the desk top. Stuck to the lid, the small hot-pink note instructed them to "Play Me".

"What the hell?" Dean stepped toward the desk, lifting the lid and glancing back at his brother. Sam shrugged and pulled out one of the chairs near the desk, sitting down.

Dean took the other chair and sat down, clicking on the application in the centre of the screen.

The film had been shot by the students in it, a hot-potch of scenes that loosely covered the last four days. There'd been three kids – Michael, Brian and Kate – and Dean watched the awkward but predictable triangle playing out in front of him with little surprise.

The girl – _Kate's_ – face filled the screen. "I'm leaving. And you'll never hear from me ever again. Look, I know that there's another way. I can eat animal hearts."

"I've never hurt anyone. Nobody human, anyway. I didn't choose this. Please... please give me a chance."

When the screen went to black, then back to the desk top, they sat in silence for a long moment.

"Well," Sam said finally. Dean nodded.

"Yeah, never give your powers to the girl whose boyfriend you just ganked, right?" he said, turning around in the chair and looking at the bodies. "Okay, so, uh..."

He got up and walked to the sheet-covered body. "This ..." He lifted the shift and looked at the face of the young man lying underneath. "Yeah … is Michael, which means that that is ..."

Sam got up and looked at the torn-apart body close to the wall. "Brian Wilcox, our friendly neighbourhood cameraman."

"Right," Dean said, staring at the remains.

Sam exhaled gustily. "All right, so ..."

He looked at his watch, calculating the time that had elapsed since the film had been finished. "What, she's got about a half-day jump on us?"

"Mm-hmm." Dean nodded slightly.

She was a monster, it wasn't like that was debatable. She'd killed Brian, ripped through the guy's throat and yanked out his heart. Of course, he'd been a monster too. Kind of saved them the trouble.

Sam looked at him, brow creasing up. "You all right?"

"Mm-hmm."

Benny was a monster. A vampire who'd told him that he drank from donated bags. It could've been the truth. It might not've. He couldn't go and verify it. But he'd believed in him. Believed that he'd tried to turn himself around, believed that he'd stopped drinking people. A thought of Lenore flickered through his mind. Another one. She'd kept her nest drinking animal blood.

Maybe it was possible. Maybe it was possible that Kate would never touch a human being, never know the difference between an animal heart and a human one. Without knowing, without tasting it, it was easier to keep it under control, he thought. He thought of the wire. What he'd done. Snap judgements on right and wrong didn't come quite so easily on the subject of monsters now.

"Look, Kate's right. She hasn't hurt anybody – well, anybody human at least," Sam said quietly, not sure what his brother was thinking about, just recognising that he hadn't immediately turned around and leapt for the car. It had to mean something.

"No. No one human," Dean said, nodding. _No one human. And we all kill monsters, don't we? Killing monsters, that was allowed. As long as they weren't your friends._ "Alright. Let's give her a shot."

"Seriously?" Sam stared, not quite sure he'd heard right.

"Yeah," Dean said, looking around at the blood-soaked room. "Yeah."

"And, look," Sam turned to the desk. "If Kate pops back up, I mean, if she strays, then no questions asked." He unplugged the hard drive and the laptop and picked them up, looking back at Dean.

"We do what we got to do and, uh, we take her down," he finished, eyes narrowing a little as he took the expression on his brother's face. He looked … lost, almost.

"We leaving this all like this?" Dean's attention came back into focus.

"Do you want to clean it up?"

"Not especially," Dean said, looking at the walls and furniture. "But we left prints."

"Yeah, I'll chuck these in the car, come back." He turned and walked out the front door.

Dean retraced his path from entering the house to this moment and pulled a soft, clean cloth from his jacket pocket. He walked across the hall, wiping the door knobs, the newel post of the staircase, going upstairs and wiping down the knobs he'd touched up there. When he came down, Sam had wiped down the desk and the docking station and the iPod.

"Clean?"

"Yeah."

They walked out through the front door and down the steps, splitting up to go around to their respective sides of the car and getting in. Sam looked around as Dean pushed the key in but didn't turn it.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Do I really say 'awesome' a lot?"

"No," Sam said straight away. "No."

* * *

_**I-94 W, North Dakota**_

Dean watched the road as the headlights illuminated it, fifty yards at a time. Sam was sleeping and the car was quiet, just the rumble of the engine and the thrum of the tyres under him.

He thought of Benny, somewhere out there in the night. Was he feeding or was he keeping his nose clean? Did it matter? He was a vampire.

_No matter how hard you try, you are what you are. You will kill again._

He rubbed his hand over his jaw, rasp of stubble over the palm and fingers, hearing the words – _his words_ – in his head again. Was that going to happen? He didn't know. Didn't know how to tell, didn't know how to be sure.

Did he owe Sam an explanation? Of that part of Purgatory, and getting out, at least?

_Trust me, I'm an expert. Maybe in a year, maybe ten. But eventually, the other shoe will drop. It always does._

An expert. God. Who the hell had he been back then, anyway? What if she hadn't killed again? The way he was hoping that Benny wouldn't? Or Kate, who he'd just let walk into the sunset without so much as a second thought? What the fuck was happening to him that his priorities, the things he'd thought he'd known were all getting so screwed up?

He looked down at the speedometer and eased his foot back off the accelerator. Sam had been about that. No Bobby to call off the cops or the feds or anyone they handed out their little white cards to. No backup. No verification. It was a big, empty world he was in now.

He stared at the road, black, delineated with white lines that sped past in the brightness of the headlights. He wanted to tell Sam. He wasn't sure when he'd started to want that, but he thought that his brother might've been right about rebuilding the trust between them. And he'd been right about working together without that trust. It wouldn't work. It couldn't work.

_No_, he thought, fingers tightening around the wheel. He couldn't. Couldn't see the look in Sam's eyes. Couldn't ask him to understand. Not now. And what if it opened other secrets? Secrets that he would die before admitting to? No. Sam would never find out. There was no way he could, so it didn't matter if he didn't tell him. _You thought that about Amy, too, didn't you?_ The small, sly voice in his mind said. That was different. _Yeah, it's always different. How about Ruby? How did that feel, when you found out about it? Found out that your little brother had been keeping that a secret?_

Only truth is freedom. Complete truth. From the heart. Everything else … that's a cage.


	10. Chapter 10 Blood and Blood

**Chapter 10 Blood and _Blood_**

* * *

_**Eagle Harbour, Washington**_

The night air was heavy with salt, forming halos around the caged lights that lined the floating concrete docks. Somewhere a loose wire halyard tapped against an aluminium mast, the quiet clanging a counterpoint to the soft footfalls of the man walking up the dock and into the boatyard. He was slender and self-possessed, dark-haired, smooth-skinned, neatly dressed, the leather patches on the elbows of the navy jacket a slight affectation.

Benny stepped from the shadows as he passed by. "Hello, Quentin."

The vampire turned around slowly, his gaze travelling up and down the man behind him as if he were looking at a ghost. "Benny."

Benny strolled toward him, face half-shadowed by the soft, peaked cap he wore, navy pea-coat identical to the one he'd been wearing when they'd thrown him into the ground. It'd taken him some time to reassemble his wardrobe, but he wanted them to recognise him easily, no mistakes made.

Quentin backed up a step. "No ... it – it can't be you."

Benny smiled, the soft drawl in his voice becoming more pronounced. "I get the confusion. You of all people knew I was really, truly dead. After all, you held down my legs, didn't you?" He was pretty sure that Quentin believed, now. "When the old man told Sorento to saw off my head."

The smile disappeared. "Where is he?"

Quentin grimaced slightly. "Are you serious? Did you really think I'd tell you where he is?"

"Well, I guess I was …," Benny said softly, lifting the long, asymmetrical blade in his hand up, the light above them glancing from the edge. "… kind of hoping you wouldn't."

Quentin's eyes shifted to the knife and returned. "On the other hand, I might show you where he is." His gaze cut behind the vampire in front of him to the two men walking up from the docks. "After me and my boys take off your hands and feet."

Benny watched his face, turning his head slightly to catch one of them in his peripheral vision. He would have known they were there from the scent, the miasma of rotting flowers and rotten flesh that drifted with vampires who killed. He smiled a little. "Well, don't go through all that trouble on my account."

"Please. You go and crawl your way out of God's ass for another ride on the merry-go-round," Quentin said, his face hardening. "The old man's gonna want to see this for himself."

"Mm." Benny took off the cap, feeling that familiar hum rising through his veins. "Well, they might be able to kill me. And that's all right." He smiled at the man in front of him. "'Cause if they do, I know exactly where I'm going ... and who I'll see when I get there."

Quentin's growl burst out of his chest as his fangs descended and Benny smiled widely as the vampire lunged toward him. He stepped slightly to one side, the long blade whistling softly in the thickly humid night air, Quentin's head sliced free of his body and flying out into the darkness as Benny used the momentum of the swing to spin smoothly around. The other two were perfectly placed, almost, to either side of him, barely a stride's reach away. The razor sharp blade winked in the light as it descended again.

* * *

_**Enid, Oregon**_

Dean pulled into the parking lot of the motel and drove into the space in front of the door, glancing at his brother. "This it?"

Sam nodded tensely. "Yeah."

They got out and moved fast to the room door, Sam dropping to one knee, picks out. The door opened and he felt along the wall, hitting the light switch and striding into the room, head turning from side to side as he realised it was empty, going to the bathroom and hitting the lightswitch in there.

Behind him, Dean sauntered into the room, looking slowly around, half-nodding to himself. Of course the kid wasn't here. He hadn't been anywhere they'd tracked him to.

"Well, that is twice that he's burned us," he said, looking over at Sam. "Shame on you."

"No, no, no, no." Sam shook his head as he walked over to his brother. "I'm the one who said he set us up."

Dean overrode him. "No, you said, 'I wonder if Kevin is setting us up' and then you started in with the – the techno babble." He looked around, spotting the mini-bar. "That was like two states ago."

Sam gave up, sitting down on the end of the closest bed. "Yeah, well, whatever. Either way, that's another room billed to one of Kevin's false credit IDs." He watched as Dean picked the lock on the cupboard, frustration rising. "And the motel ran his number today!"

"Just like he actually checked in?" Dean paused, half-turned to Sam.

"Yes," Sam said, the word huffing out on his exhale.

The lock opened and Dean pulled the doors out. "Kid's like Rain Man. He's like a crappy little credit-card-counting ... criminal prodigy Rain Man."

"Well, he was in Advanced Placement," Sam said sarcastically.

"Shut up." He passed his brother a beer and opened his own. "When's that little idiot gonna stop running from us?"

"I don't know, Dean. I mean, you did try to kill his mother," Sam snapped, feeling his anger rising again. He wasn't sure who he was more angry with, his brother for giving Kevin a helluva reason to run, or Kevin for not realising that all the running would sooner or later lead someone to him, and it might not be them.

Dean looked at him indignantly. "I was trying to kill Crowley, okay?"

Sam looked at him in disbelief.

"Who happened to be wearing Kevin's mother at the time," Dean added reluctantly. "Well, there's a difference!"

Sam stared at him. "Apparently not to Kevin. Oh, I know. Maybe because – oh, yeah – it's his mother."

The cell in Dean's pocket shrilled precisely into the resultant silence. Dean looked down and pulled it out.

"Hold that thought. No, actually, you know what? Don't hold that thought."

"Hello?" He turned away from Sam as he heard the voice on the other end of the line. "Hello? Uh, hang on. There's not enough bars."

He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him, walking past the car and stopping next to the Impala's trunk.

"Benny?"

"_Hey, Dean,"_ Benny said slowly. _"You, um – you got a minute? Afraid I messed up, buddy."_

"What did you do?" Dean asked worriedly.

_"No, man, not like that,"_ Benny said, dragging in a breath with difficulty. _"Just had … a little … disagreement, with, uh, three of my … peers."_

Dean's eyes closed for a second. "I'm sorry. You took on how many?" He felt a faint prickle at the back of his neck and looked over his shoulder at the room. "Are you crazy?"

_"Hey."_ Benny swallowed. _"See, the thing is, my legs – they ain't working so good. There's, uh... a fuel barge not too far from here. I'm pretty sure I can make it at a slow crawl. I was kind of hoping maybe I could ask you for one more favour?"_

"Yeah. Where are you?" Dean asked

"_Eagle Harbour, Washington. Down at the fishing docks. Near the diesel pumps."_ Benny hissed as he tried to move one leg, tipping his head back and forcing his breath in and out. _"My rig ... is ... uh, parked in front. There's blood in a cooler in the back."_

Dean listened, hearing the pain. His mouth compressed a little as he thought of time and distance and what Sam was going to say.

"Get under cover, I'll be there in three hours," Dean said tightly. He closed the phone and turned around, striding back to the room.

He opened the door and walked to the end of the bed, picking up his duffle and the gear bag and tossing both onto the bed.

Sam looked at him, brow crinkling up. "What are you doing?"

"Gotta go. I'll be about twenty four hours," he said, transferring a machete, shotgun, salt, two boxes of shells and two of bullets from one bag to the other.

"And – and what exactly is that supposed to mean, you've got to go?"

Dean turned around and looked at his brother. "Which words are giving you trouble?"

Sam's mouth compressed tightly. "We're on the case, remember, Dean? The – the Winchester holy grail shut-the-gates-of-Hell-forever" case."

Dean nodded. "Sure are. But in order to close the Gates of Hell, we need our Prophet, am I right?" He looked at Sam questioningly. "So step one – find Kevin Tran. Well, he ain't here."

He turned away, zipping up the gear bag and dropping it to the floor. He looked at the mini-bar and walked over to it. "But he wanted us to be, which means we're probably as far away from him as he could possibly put us." He crouched down and opened the bar door, looking into the fridge for anything that would keep his stomach quiet for the next few hours. "So step two – find Kevin Tran."

He glanced up at Sam. "You mind if I take the Toblerone?"

Sam stared at him and he shrugged, picking up the chocolate bar and putting it into his pocket. He grabbed a couple of bags of nuts and two cans of soda and shut the door, turning back to the bed and picking up the soft leather bag that had replaced his last canvas duffle.

Sam watched him pick up the bag and head for the door, his mouth hanging open – mentally and literally for all he knew. He hurried to follow him as Dean opened it and went out.

"Wait. Dean, seriously?"

Dean walked around the front of the car to the driver's side. "Hey, the trail is dead, but the room is paid for. You got some research to do, and I got some personal crap I got to take care of. That's all," he said over his shoulder.

Sam stopped on the other side of car, looking over the roof at him. "What does that mean – "personal"?"

"Did you have a stroke? Vocabulary?" Dean looked at him. "Personal, as in my own grown-up personal – I don't know – crap."

"Damn it –"

"What, Sam?" Dean cut him off, voice deepening slightly. "Last I counted, you took a year off from the job. I need a day."

He opened the door and got in, and Sam watched him start the engine, reverse out of the space and drive out of the lot, not a backward glance, not so much as a flicker in the rearview mirror. He didn't know what was going on. Dean didn't have personal crap. He didn't have anything personal.

* * *

_**I-5 N, Oregon**_

The interstate was empty and the black car roared through the tail-end of the night alone. Dean watched the road, everything else purely automatic, hands and feet knowing what they were doing, his mind filled with a low-charge hum that was slowly spreading out through his nervous system.

Benny. Whistling. He didn't know what the tune had been, although he could've sworn he'd heard before. Somewhere. The small clearing had been seemingly empty. But they'd come, like cockroaches in the dark. The vampire's senses had felt them all, his head turning to show direction, Dean's gaze following it and seeing the soundless undead, wraith-like between the narrow trees, coming out of the mists.

There were things that happened in a man's life that he couldn't forget, couldn't write off. At least, not if he thought of himself as a man. It wasn't something he could articulate, or explain or tell anyone about. Only a feeling that lived down in his gut. A scale, almost, of action and bloodshed and violence and honour.

It was how he weighed things, that scale. Betrayal against trust. Honour against evil. A blood debt against a blood debt.

In the year that he'd fought and struggled and bled down there, the vampire had filled the scale. Had never let him down. Had never walked away or given up or left his back bare.

It mattered. It was all that mattered, in fact.

* * *

_**Enid, Oregon**_

Sam pulled another beer from the mini-bar and wandered around the room, feeling the frustration and anger in him dissipating slowly. He was no closer to being able to figure out where Dean had gone or what could possibly construe a personal emergency for his brother, but he realised that a lot of the emotions that had come boiling out at Dean's inexplicable behaviour had been due to feeling like a failure for losing Kevin again.

He'd been so sure they'd get them this time. He should've realised that Kevin would have them running back and forth across the country if he could. He needed a new approach for the kid.

He put the beer down on the table and reached for the old leather satchel that held the laptop, pulling it out and plugging it in and sitting down as it loaded. Bringing up the documents he'd been able to find on Kevin, he ran the details through the credit reference site again.

"You are a wascally wabbit, Mr. Tran," he muttered softly, looking at another new application from the student. For a little over twelve months on the job, Kevin had really developed into quite a competent grifter.

He picked up the beer, and stared at the application, wondering where else Kevin might have left his prints. The possibilities were legion, and he'd spent too long out of this kind of business himself to be sure that he knew of all avenues that Kevin might. A year gone from this world was like a lifetime in any other industry.

An image flashed into his mind and he typed in another name, staring at the application when it appeared.

"Concerned. Not stalking... concerned," he told himself softly. There wasn't a point to it. He just wanted to look, now that everything else was not possible.

He would go back, when he was done with his obligations here. It might not do any good, but he would still go. Her face, when she'd turned back to him, the phone held tightly in one hand, was still etched on his mind. It'd made leaving easier, but at the same time, harder as well. He didn't know how he felt about any of it, hadn't looked at any of what had happened, had just run. Again.

A soft noise intruded on his thoughts and he swivelled around in the chair, getting up silently, and walking to the bathroom. He flipped on the light and looked around, then up, the fan rattling softly against the vent.

The rattle brought its own memories and Sam's mouth twisted up derisively. He turned the fan off and unscrewed the vent cover, staring at the fan for a moment, then going back out of the bathroom to get the small set of tools that he now carried everywhere.

* * *

_**Eagle Harbour, Washington**_

The sun had risen an hour ago, and Dean glanced at his watch as he drove the car down the nearly deserted riverfront. On the other side of the inlet, traffic ran along an elevated road, and downriver the sound of a ship's horn floated out over the sea and land. But the parking lot of Puget Sound Shipping was quiet and almost empty. He pulled up next to a pickup losing its battle with rust, a battered canopy covering the tray, and turned off the engine.

The cab of the truck was open and empty. Dean walked around to the back, lifting the fibreglass and glass hinged door and saw the cooler sitting next to a couple of black canvas duffle bags, a sleeping bag, can of gasoline. He lifted the lid. Inside were bags of blood, of the type usually found at hospitals. He shook his head and closed the cooler, lifting it out and shutting the back of the canopy.

Now all he had to do was work out which of the half-dozen boats tied up along the waterfront was a fuel barge.

Finding the blood trail made it easy.

"Benny!" Dean called, looking around the barge's open concrete decks. He turned and saw the flight of stairs. On the edge of the painted steel railing, a smear of blood. And coming from below decks, the faintest hint of something rotten.

At the bottom of the stairs, a long narrow corridor stretched out. He could see the vampire, propped up against the wall down near the end. _Christ_. He hurried down and crouched beside him, looking at the rips and tears in his shirt, the blood stains that covered most of him. Benny's eyes were closed.

"Benny?" he said loudly. He couldn't even check for a goddamned pulse, vampires not having any. Benny's eyelids flickered and he swallowed his relief at the sight. "Not lookin' good."

The eyes cracked open a little wider and the vampire managed a small laugh. "Up yours."

Dean opened the chest and pulled out a bag of blood, pulling the end off the tube and pushing it into Benny's mouth, holding the bag up as the blood flowed down. Benny swallowed convulsively, shuddering as the blood ran down his throat, his eyes closing again.

Dean looked at the mess of his legs. Aside from the mincemeat around the thighs and knees, he could see that the hamstrings had been severed, on both legs. How the hell had the vamp managed to get here, he wondered? And for that matter, how'd he killed whoever had attacked him without the use of his legs?

* * *

Dean sat on the edge of the table, looking out at the water. After about four bags, Benny'd been able to move, not great but under his own steam. They'd made the trip up to the messroom slowly, and hooked up the bags above the couch, the vampire drinking his way steadily through another half-a-dozen bags as the sun moved from side of the sky to the other.

He'd gone out a half-hour ago, to grab some food and coffee and check his messages. There hadn't been any, of course. Sam would be holding a giant-economy sized grudge for being dumped in the middle of the night without a full explanation. Dean shrugged inwardly, he'd deal with it when he got back. He wasn't going to leave before he was sure that Benny was okay.

When he'd gotten back, he'd heard the sound of a shower from the small bathroom to one side of the cabin. He looked around as the door opened, and the vampire walked out, steady on both pins, dressed in clean clothes, drying his hair with a towel.

Dean stood up, staring at him. "Wow. You, uh... look okay."

"Getting there," Benny allowed, putting the towel back in the bag and zipping it up.

He watched him pick up his jacket. "Dude, you were double-hamstrung."

Benny grinned at him, pulling the jacket on. "Yeah, well, a little rest, a half a cooler full of AB-negative – most wounds short of an amputation will mend up ... vampirically speaking."

_Vampirically speaking?_ "Uh-huh."

The vampire picked up the bag and pulled on his cap, walking over to him.

"I'll be a hundred percent before you know it," he said, picking up the cooler and holding out his hand. "Thank you, _cher_."

Dean shook the offered hand, looking at him, brows drawn together. "Benny, what's going on?"

"Oh, your work here is done, Dean. You already saved the day," Benny said, walking around him and slapping a hand against his shoulder. Dean turned with him, eyes narrowed at the evasiveness in the vampire's voice. "You know, I got my, uh, deal, and you got – what'd you call it? A family business?"

"Benny," Dean said, looking at him. "What's going on?"

Benny sighed. "You and that whole 'friend' thing, man."

Dean knew what he was talking about. Loyalty. Above all else. To Cas, at first, when they'd found him. Then to the vampire, when Cas had been lost to him and he'd had no one else.

"You keep doing this and I might not be as close the next time 'round," he said uncomfortably. "I just want to make sure I'm not going to be wasting time and gas chasing after you and saving your ass every few days."

"Well, it's good to know you're still dumb as ever," Benny said resignedly, shaking his head at Dean's excuse as he put the cooler and bag down and sat on the edge of the table.

"Some things never change," Dean agreed readily, turning to look at him. "Now, why are you getting into machete fights with your own kind?"

Benny looked down for a moment, then lifted his head. "Quentin, the one I came for? We were in the same nest." He hesitated for a moment, unsure of what his friend would think of it. Not that it mattered. "I'm hunting the vampire who turned me. My maker."

Dean took that in with a frown. "Well, now, don't get me wrong. I'm down with the hunting, but, uh... why?"

"Kill him before he kills me," Benny said. "Again."

Dean looked at him. "I thought your maker left you alone?"

"He did," Benny exhaled softly. "For a while. Then he found me. Brought me into his flock. Made sure I knew that the sun rose and set with him." He shook his head.

"And you didn't tell me this before because …?"

"I didn't think it mattered, Dean," Benny looked at him, standing up slowly. "Hell, I wasn't sure we would even make it out. I didn't want to think about what I was going to do if we did – seemed like it would bring bad luck. And we had enough of that."

Dean couldn't argue that point.

* * *

_**Enid, Oregon**_

Sam rubbed his hands over his face tiredly. He should have crashed last night, he was getting too old to pull all-nighters the way he used to. He snorted at himself and got up, going to the coffee pot and pouring out the last cup.

Kevin had laid a number of credit card trails around the country. He'd sorted and resorted them, looking for a pattern, for a tell. Everyone had them; even the most experienced of hackers would leave some kind of pattern behind, do one thing in the same way every time. He just had to find it.

The coffee was bitter, but it was hot and he kept drinking it, letting his mind free-float as he considered all the options someone on the run had for screwing up any pursuit, real-time or digital or otherwise. Money wasn't a problem for them. Linda Tran had pulled enough cash to keep them going for a year, no matter what they needed, as soon as they'd left Laramie. What was left in the accounts was frozen now, but it didn't help in the short-term. Transport wasn't a suitable path either. They could've bought something second-hand and with plenty of identification, he'd never find them that way.

If Kevin's only goal was to keep them off the radar, then he probably wouldn't be able to find them at all, he thought tiredly. All they needed to do was keep their heads down and keep an eye on the various means of tracking, and they'd be invisible. But, if Kevin was also trying to find Crowley, that would give him a trail to follow. The trouble was, he couldn't imagine how Kevin would be looking for the demon, what he knew about the King of Hell, what he didn't.

He walked back to the table, sitting down in front of the laptop and glancing at his phone, lying on the table beside it. No messages. No calls. No nothing.

He'd spent most of the day resolutely not thinking about his brother. There wasn't much point starting now, he thought, looking down at the blank screen. Dean'd taken off without explanation or warning exactly once in the last eight years. That had been to hand himself over to Michael.

There was no great self-sacrifice to be made here, no reason for the sudden departure, the urgency of the errand poorly disguised under the broad blanket of 'personal crap'. Sam sat down, lowering the cup to the table, one finger tapping against the phone lightly. The last time he'd gone, he hadn't told him because he'd known that his brother wouldn't agree, wouldn't begin to agree.

What could he be doing that he wouldn't countenance now? Something from the last year? Something that he'd hidden – god, that left the field wide, didn't it. Something that he was trying to keep hidden?

He shook his head. The sleep-walking or whatever it had been had almost stopped. His brother slept in small chunks through the night, and somehow managed to function the next day, temper short and fraying, but otherwise, pretty much himself, mostly himself, Sam thought. He still hadn't said anything about the nightmares he'd had. Or the way he was keyed up, always alert, always watching, listening. Sometimes he looked as if he was listening to things – things Sam couldn't hear – things that were, presumably locked in his mind.

He finished his coffee, looking at the screen of the laptop. There was nothing he could do about Dean. Except be around. He closed his eyes, mouth twisting into a suddenly sour smile. Of course, it was hard to be around when he took off.

* * *

_**Eagle Harbour, Washington**_

Dean looked down at the bloodstained possessions of the late, unlamented Quentin that had been spread out across the table, lit by a single lamp. He picked up the money clip and tucked it into his back pocket. Services rendered, he thought, glancing up at Benny. The vampire's attention was on the past and the receipts in the wallet he was looking through.

"Quentin and I went way back – one of the old man's favourites, next to me, it turns out," he said softly.

A spiral-bound notebook sat next to a phone and Dean picked it up, flipping through the pages.

"Listen to this. _Age of Aquarius II. _ 0800. And then there's some other numbers all crossed out," he read.

Benny looked at the notebook, brow lifting slightly.

"Some other weird names here, too – _The Big Mermaid_, _Solitaire_ – it's all crossed out, except this one – _The Lucky Myra_," Dean continued, staring at the page.

"Yachts," Benny said. Dean looked up at him, brow creasing.

"Names of yachts – _Lucky Myra_ ...," The vampire elaborated. He took the notebook from Dean, looking down the list. "_Age of Aquarius II_. Look at this one – _Sea You Later_, spelled s-e-a. I mean, come on."

Dean looked at the notebook. "So, then these are launch times. And what – destinations?"

"Mm-hmm," Benny acknowledged. "Except none of them ever get there."

He pointed to the last entry. "_The Lucky Myra_ left yesterday afternoon. I guarantee you, it's already been hit."

"What do you mean, 'hit'?" Dean looked at him, frowning.

Benny straightened a little. "Boarded, burned, and buried at sea," he said quietly. "My nest – that's how we fed ... how we always fed. We kept a tight little fleet, maybe a half-dozen boats. Nothing ostentatious, just pleasure craft. I must have circled the Americas ten times during my tour."

Dean listened to him, imagining them. Imagining the boat owners, in the middle of the big blue, nothing in sight, except a boatload of monsters, coming alongside, climbing over the rail, fangs descended, terror and pain and blood … and then … nothing. Death and the cold embrace of the ocean.

"A few of us would act as stringers and patrol the harbours, looking for the right-size target – fat, rich yachts going to far-off ports. Take down the boat's name and destination, radio it to the crew on the water. And then we just, uh ... let the ocean swallow up all our sins."

Benny watched the man's expressions. The horror, the cold decision to end it, that didn't appear, and he wasn't sure why. Dean had told him he was a hunter. Killing monsters was what he did. But he didn't seem to be too worried about how the nest had fed, all those innocent people drained and thrown overboard, or burned up with the yachts they'd sailed on.

"Vampire pirates?" Dean said slowly. "That's what you guys are? Vampirates."

He looked at Benny. Benny looked away, one side of his mouth curling up a little at the joke.

"You know, all the years we ran together, I can't believe nobody ever thought of that."

"What do you mean? It's like the third thing you say," Dean looked at him.

"No, it isn't," Benny said firmly, not sure if Dean was joking or serious. There were parts of the man standing across from him that he did not understand, even now, even after all they'd been through. Dean would've died for him, he knew that. He'd killed for him, his own kind, and that was a memory he couldn't push deep enough. There was a part of the man that made him nervous, deep down. Something lived and breathed in Dean that had no business being up here, he thought. No business being in a human being who was as loyal and honest and straight as Dean. He'd seen it a few times. It hadn't been under control.

"All right, so, your maker is set up to feed around here, right?" Dean picked up the wallet on the table and opened it. He pulled out the cash and tucked it into his pocket and unfolded a piece of paper. "Well, what are we looking for?"

"Well, he likes to live in style. He usually rents legitimately. Always remote, always coastal," Benny said slowly, thinking about the options along this coastline.

"So an island, maybe? You got a cable bill here," he said, reading it. "Hmm. Quentin's got the NFL package." He turned the receipt around, straightening it out. "Prentiss Island. Heard of it?"

Benny smiled. "Oh, yeah."

"How far?" Dean looked at him.

"Dean, this ain't your fight," Benny looked at him, head inclined slightly. "That's a nest. There's a dozen vampires in it – or there was, when I was killed. You don't need this."

Dean lifted his head and looked at him, his eyes dark and cold, the humour, the casual, prosaic expression gone from his face.

"Benny. Your nest is done feeding on people," he said, very softly. "This is what I do."

Benny felt a chill run down his neck and spine. This man he recognised. This man had looked up at him, covered in blood not his own, and had cut him down. He felt a fleeting stab of pity for his nest-mates.

* * *

_**I-5 N, Washington**_

"Keep heading north," Benny said quietly, looking out through the windshield. "We head left at Burlington."

Dean nodded. Between them, the cooler sat, filled with blood bags, the faint copperish reek starting to make his stomach twitch.

"So, if you were your maker's favourite, why did he kill you?" Dean looked at the vampire curiously.

Benny stretched a little and exhaled. "When you get turned, it's like you're reborn into a vampire nest. Your maker – he means everything to you." He turned and opened the cooler, pulling out a bag and opening it, needing the healing blood. "I mean, you really start believing he's God. Now, if your maker happens to believe the same thing, well ..." he let the sentence hang, drinking from the bag.

"See how that could be a pickle," Dean said, glancing at him and registering what the vampire was doing a second later.

"Mm," Benny sucked down half the bag, eyes closed.

"Well, uh –," he started, then looked at the bag again. "You really have to do that? I mean, right now?"

Benny turned and saw the slight grimace, laughing softly at the incongruities in the man beside him. Hip-deep in blood didn't bother him at all. But someone sucking down a baggie?

"I'm sorry, brother. I'm better, but I'm still on the mend." He closed the bag.

"Right," Dean looked back at the road. It was creepy. Watching it. Creepy. And too much of a reminder of what Benny was, beyond a friend and a comrade.

"Anyway ... our Father … he was a jealous god. He kept the family together but kept us apart from the rest of the world. Always at sea," Benny said quietly. "I always did what was best for the nest. Till I met her."

Dean looked at him, seeing the vampire's head bowed, hearing the change in his voice as he continued.

"Andrea. Andrea Kormos. Beautiful. I mean, words don't even cut it, you know? Greek, heiress."

"Come on," Dean said, looking at him. He couldn't believe that the vampire was spouting this drivel, couldn't reconcile the image of Benny, fangs descended and bloody, with the wistful, love-lorn note in his voice.

Benny laughed a little at disbelief in Dean's voice. "She was sailing a 42-foot sloop to the Canary Islands. Now, I should have called her boat's destination in to my crew, but instead, I joined her on it," he said.

"Seriously? Was Fabio on the cover of that paperback?" Dean asked, mockingly, squashing a rushing emotion he couldn't name and didn't want to know about back down into the depths.

Benny didn't smile, he looked down, feeling the memories pushing at his heart – the dead, unbeating heart that had nevertheless been filled with a love that he still couldn't get over, couldn't get past.

"My life changed when she entered it, Dean. Everything I had been or done up to that point just ... seemed to vanish ... into what we had become together," he said, unsure of why he wanted the man to understand this. Because it had changed him? Beyond all recognition? He'd lived in pieces for so long, before. "I mean ... we found it, man."

He looked across at his friend, seeing that Dean was no longer smiling, no longer scoffing. He wondered about that. He hadn't told him this, when he'd told him of his past. He hadn't wanted to share her then, in that place. Here, it was different.

"Eventually, we settled in Louisiana. And then one night, we were coming home, and the old man – he was just there. Quentin, Sorento, my oldest nest-mates. It was only that night I understood what a crime it was to him – me leaving him. They pinned me down, and they beheaded me," he said. "The last thing I saw was the old man tearing out Andrea's throat."

He felt his own close up. It hadn't been a surprise, of course not. Julian had been nothing if not vindictive and spiteful. But it hurt. It still hurt, somewhere in his chest, where the few feelings that remained to him lived. It was a wound that was never going to heal because the scab kept falling off, every single time he remembered.

"Well, that's what payback's all about – am I right?" Dean said, looking at him.

Benny stared through the windshield. It wasn't revenge. It wasn't even for retribution. He wanted to kill them simply because they were an evil on the earth that he could no longer bear to see, to know about. He would kill them as a deterrent. And because Julian would certainly hunt him down if he let him live.

"Docks are up ahead. Should be able to find a dinghy to use," he said as the water showed in glimpses at the end of the cross-streets. So much had changed. But the waterfront rarely did. The working waterfront, at least.

* * *

_**Prentiss Island, Puget Sound, Washington**_

The small launch chugged quietly through the water, its wake leaving barely a ripple behind it. The island, although private and exclusive, was just short of a mile from the mainland shore, and it was only a few minutes after midnight when Benny brought them around the point and into the still waters of the small bay, slipping between the mooring piles that lined the entrance.

Dean picked up the forward line, and settled himself on the bow, watching the sandy shore approaching. He jumped as he felt the keel touch the bottom, pulling the boat a little way up, securing the line and turning back as Benny tossed the two bags of gear to him. On the water, every sound carried, and he winced slightly at each clank as the bags dropped onto the ground.

They picked up the bags and Benny led the way across the tough, salt-soaked grassy foreshore into a small wood that hid the house from view.

"We're close," the vampire said softly.

Dean stared at his phone, typing in the text message one-handed. _Hunting vamps – nest on Prentiss Island … not alone_.

"Remind you of anything?" Benny stopped on a bend in the path, unzipping his bag and pulling his knife from it..

Dean looked at him and then at the phone. Yeah. It reminded him that he had his backup, right here. And Sam was distant. In more ways than one, he thought, mouth tightening as he deleted the message quickly. He put the phone back in his pocket and pulled out _Purgatory_, shaking the blade a little to free it from the bag.

"It's weird being back – in the world, I mean," Benny said, his voice holding a thread of uneasiness. He threw his bag into the shadows beside the path. Dean tossed his next to Benny's in the darkness of the slope next to him. "Innit?"

"Sure as hell is," Dean looked down at the stone blade he carried briefly. He needed it, he realised suddenly. Needed it with him. The thought was uncomfortable and he drove it away. The axe was the best weapon for job, that was all. It had proved itself.

"I mean, what do you do with it all?" Benny looked from side to side as they walked along the path, footfalls deadened in the leaf-fall. "All the – all the everything?"

Dean's attention sharpened on him as he caught the frustration at the edge of Benny's voice.

"Hell, I don't even know if this world is real, if I'm real," Benny continued, staring around him.

_No. Not now_, Dean thought. _This is not the time for navel-watching_.

"Hey, listen to me," he said, his voice low but hard.

"I've seen what happens down that rabbit hole, okay?" He stopped, and beside Benny stopped as well, looking at him. "We're real. Benny, this is real. It's the only way to play this game, you get me?"

From the edge of the woods, the house looked undefended, lights on in most of the downstairs rooms, one shining out from the second storey, the fitful moonlight painting the Georgian front in shades of lilac and charcoal.

"We'll go around the back," Benny said softly. Dean nodded, following the vampire soundlessly around the garden and into the shadows of the house.

The multi-paned glass door opened readily to Dean's picks and he opened it, flinching inwardly at the loud click of the lock and the slight squeak of the hinges. Might as well have busted down the front door, he thought sourly, following Benny inside and closing the door behind him. The hallway wasn't long, a couple of doors on either side, and it led into the front entrance, under the sweeping staircase.

Next to the stairs a delicate harpsichord stood, the patterned tiled front clear in the moonlight from the front windows, its lid raised. Benny stared at it as they walked through the entrance, stopping to touch one corner. Dean stopped and looked at him, recognising the lost look in the vampire's face.

"Time to move, Benny," he whispered.

"The old man's harpsichord," Benny murmured, half to himself. He hadn't realised that memory would come back like this, in great ocean rollers, swamping him.

"Benny!" Dean hissed, turning and walking out of the exposed room, into the hallway on the other side.

Benny turned to follow him, and saw the frame, sitting alone on a pedestal close by the instrument. He stepped back and around, and saw the portrait, his hand reaching for it, snatching it up as he stared at the face, the beautiful, beloved face.

"No. No, no," he muttered, he turned around, looking for Dean, realisation – of everything – crashing into him, crashing over him. At the top of the stairs, a door opened and light spilled down the wall next to the stairs. He looked up from the frame in his hand, saw her coming down, the long stride, the unconscious grace with which she'd always moved with as unmistakable now as it had been the last time he'd seen her.

Andrea stopped mid-way and looked at him, her brows drawing together slowly in disbelief. "Benny?"

"Andrea," he could barely get her name out of his throat, his gaze locked on her as she moved fast down the stairs, then slowed at the bottom, staring at him, into him, holding him as tightly immobile as if he'd been bound.

He heard them, behind him. Saw from the corner of his eye, Sorento coming down the stairs behind her. Smelled their reek all around him. But he couldn't move. Couldn't do anything other than look at her. Every detail matched his memories. And he shut away the knowledge of how it was possible. For her to be here. To be in front of him. Shut it away and tried not to look at it.

The first hit was from behind, the fist smashing into the back of his skull and knocking him to the floor. The second from the man in front of him, knuckles splitting the skin over the brow. He lost track after that, and none of it mattered because his body couldn't be any more battered than his mind was at that moment.

Dean pressed hard back against the wall in an alcove off the hallway, listening as bone hit bone and flesh and Benny's soft grunts echoed around the room.

"Idiot."


	11. Chapter 11 All Damned

**Chapter 11 All Damned**

* * *

_**Prentiss Island, Puget Sound, Washington**_

Benny came to slowly, the chains on the handcuffs around his wrists snapping tight as he lifted his arms, the smell of rotted flowers and decomposition filling the air around him. He opened his eyes, feeling the sharp ends of his weapon pricking at his throat. Still in the entrance foyer, he noticed, that'll make it easy for Dean to find him.

He felt a gusting breath on his ear, and recognised the odd musky odour immediately.

"Gonna make me do this all over again, aren't you?" The vampire behind him said against his neck.

Benny closed his eyes. "Hello, Sorento."

He opened them as the hardened wood stakes dug a little deeper. Andrea stood a few feet away, near the bottom of the stairs, staring at him. She looked … almost … the same, he thought. But the smooth skin of her neck, and the faint polished gleam of her skin told him the truth.

"He turned you."

She nodded, her eyes on his. Once he'd been lost in those eyes. He drove the thought aside and looked at the others. Malek, standing behind Andrea. Someone new, blocking the hallway to his left. He didn't recognise that one.

Sorento was practically salivating at the thought of taking his head, he thought. He would be easy to bait. Malek was strong, always had been, he would take him before the other, and hope that the smaller vampire didn't have some extraordinary skill. Andrea … his gaze returned to her, his face expressionless as he studied her. He didn't know. Didn't know where she stood in this viper's nest. He would have to check that.

* * *

_**Enid, Oregon**_

Sam looked at his phone. _Twenty four hours is up, Dean_, he thought, picking it up. _And I want an explanation now_.

He dialled and lifted the phone to his ear. Dean's voicemail message answered after two rings, and he cut the call and put the phone on the table again. Goddamn it. He got up and went to the kitchenette, rinsing out the coffee pot and filling it and turning it on. He would just keep trying, he thought, trying to calm down the mix of anger and worry and unadulterated annoyance he felt.

* * *

_**Prentiss Island, Puget Sound, Washington**_

He seemed to be in the servant's quarters, Dean thought, looking at the plain doors and bare boards. He turned a corner and found another short hallway, with yet another intersection crossing it further up. Who built this fucking house, anyway?

His phone buzzed loudly in his pocket and he scrambled to get it out, pressing a button and cutting the call.

"Little busy right now," he muttered, shoving it back into his pocket and freezing as a sound from the hallway in front of him registered. He slid soundlessly through the door next to him, and waited in the darkness, listening.

Footfalls came down the hall and stopped. After a moment, he heard them retreating and let out his breath, easing the knob and opening the door, peering out into the empty hall.

* * *

_**Enid, Oregon**_

Sam jumped as his phone rang, snatching it up and almost sending the fresh cup of coffee beside him to the floor. He glanced at the screen and accepted the call, his other hand holding the cup steady.

"Hey."

"Okay, what?" Dean's voice was barely audible.

"What?" Sam frowned.

"Why did you call me?" Dean said slowly in a hoarse whisper as he walked down the hallway. He couldn't hear anything, ahead or behind. Didn't mean there weren't vamps there, of course.

"Why are you whispering?" Sam said in equally slow mimicry.

"It's kind of hard to explain that. I'm sort of in the middle of cleaning out a vampire's nest, and it's sort of gone a little sideways on me," he said, looking up and down the hall as he walked.

"What?!" Sam's voice blasted out of the phone and Dean slammed it against his chest, leaning against the wall and lifting his eyes skyward in exasperation.

"Are you an idiot, Dean? You know better than to go into a vamp nest alone."

"I'm not alone, damn it," he snapped back, holding the phone against his ear as he peered around the corner. Considering the noise he was making, he could expect every single one of Benny's nest-buddies showing up any second. "All right? I'm not alone. I've got backup – guy who's been tracking the nest for a while," he added, his voice dropping back to a rough whisper.

"What guy?" Sam's face screwed up as he considered the possibilities. "Garth?"

"What? No. You don't know him. He's a friend," he said absently, looking the other way. This was going on too long.

"A friend?" Sam said incredulously. "Dean, you don't have any – all your friends are dead!"

"That's not what I called to talk about!" Dean growled, and pressed the phone against his chest again as he caught a faint noise from the hallway to his right.

* * *

"Sorento, go," Andrea said to the vampire. "Tell the old man it's true."

Benny felt the weapon lift from his neck and watched Sorento walk down the hall.

"He listens to you?" He looked at her curiously.

"It's been a long time. Our Father has come to trust my judgment over Sorento's. I answer only to him," she told him, her face expressionless.

"Well, sleeping with God has got to have some perks," Benny said reasonably, wondering if she'd bite.

For a moment, she didn't move, then she walked over to him. The backhand smacked her knuckles into his jaw and he tasted the blood inside his mouth, where his teeth cut through his cheek.

"Yes, it does," she agreed coldly.

"Make sure the old man has everything he needs." She turned her head to Malek and the other vampire and Benny watched them leave without a murmur. He looked back up at her as her fist closed tightly on his jacket and she dragged him forward, her hand lifting and stroking the side of his face she'd hit. She bent and he closed his eyes as her lips brushed his, memories rising in a cloud, almost flooding out what was happening, here and now, but not quite. She dropped to her knees in front of him and he leaned forward, trying to keep contact, his breath short in his chest. He wanted it to be the same but it wasn't … exactly … the same.

"Oh, Benny. When I heard you were back – I don't know – somehow, I knew it was true. I had to believe it. To hope," she said, looking at his face.

"Andrea, what happened?" he asked quickly. "The old man said he was gonna bleed you dry."

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head helplessly. "He changed his mind. I blacked out. When I woke up, I was drinking from his wrist."

"I'm sorry," Benny said softly, wishing that he could undo what he'd done, all of it. She hadn't deserved this. "All this is because of me. I'm sorry."

"No. It's not your fault. You never hid anything from me, Benny. I chose you."

"Then why'd you stay?" He looked at her, watched her duck her head, hide her face from him. "With them? With him? Why?"

"You remember what it's like at first. First, everything resets," she stared at him, her eyes, her face filled with the painful memory of that moment. Her old life – gone. Her new life … that had been hunger. "Life is blood. That's all. And whoever gives it to you –"

"I know," Benny cut her off gently. "It's complicated. Every damn thing is complicated."

He thought about what he'd come here to do, about the anguish that had filled every damned day in Purgatory, about the knowledge he couldn't look at it, couldn't bear to see.

She slid the switchblade from the waistband of her slacks, holding it out to him. "It doesn't have to be."

Benny looked down at it, and back to her. "Andrea."

"Benny, I can't kill him," she said, tucking the knife into the inside pocket of his coat. "None of us can."

She looked at him, her eyes fierce. "But you – you came back from the grave. You're proof that he's not all-powerful, that he's not God." Slipping her hand into her pocket she pulled out the keys to the handcuffs that bound him. "He's scared of you, Benny – I know it."

He looked down as she pressed the keys into his palm, curling his fingers around them. Well, now he knew where she stood. And it hurt, inside, to know that it didn't matter.

"You understand that I came back to burn his operation to the ground, to stop the killing," he said, looking at her expressionlessly.

From the hallway, they heard a door open, footsteps echoing softly.

"Do what you came for, and we can be together," Andrea whispered, getting to her feet and laying her palm against his cheek, then stepping away as Sorento entered the foyer behind her.

"He wants Benny brought to him," the vampire said, looking suspiciously from Benny to her.

* * *

"I get the separate lives thing, but this is a hunting thing," Sam's voice was loud, too goddamned loud, Dean thought as he typed in the text message as quickly as he could. "And we need to find that line –"

"Oh, my God, stop talking! I texted you my twenty," he rasped, head snapping around as he heard the faint noise again.

Sam saw the message come in and read it. "Yeah, I got it. Look, I'm on my way. And, listen, if you handle it, great. I'll buy your friend the first round. But, Dean, listen to me. It – Dean? Dean, are you there?"

The vampire came down the hallway, frowning as he heard the voice. He stopped at the hall table and picked up the phone, staring at it for a moment.

"Dean. Dean! You kidding me?" Sam's voice blasted out.

He turned, mouth opening, teeth descending, and his head tumbled from his shoulders as the stone blade sliced through the neck. Dean looked down at his phone, picking it up and staring at the shattered screen.

"Oh, man, come on," he muttered, shoving it back in his pocket and looking down the hall. He needed to get the body out of view.

He was half-crouched, grabbing the cuffs of the man's pants when his neck prickled suddenly, and he looked up. At the end of the hallway, another vampire stood and watched him. Dropping the legs, Dean straightened, the axe swinging like an unwieldy pendulum. The vampire smiled slowly and walked toward him and he waited, relaxed and ready.

The vamp was extremely confident, he thought distantly, despite the body on the floor between them. It moved fast, but he was moving ahead of it, his senses and brain and nerve and muscle registering the telegraphed moves, anticipating the physically possible feints and turns, his reactions smooth and unhurried and the head arcing across the hall and bouncing off the wall.

Dean looked down at the two bodies that now filled the hall. Awesome. This would slow him down even more.

* * *

Benny smiled a little as he came into the room. It looked like a lawyer's office, all dark wood and leather upholstery, an attempt by a man who'd never grown up to be old and wise. How'd he not seen that before? _Didn't know Julian's history before_, he answered himself with an inward grin. Well, he knew it now.

At the other end of the room, the vampire turned around slowly, staring at him. He was young, his pale skin smooth and unlined, the eyes round and blue and guileless, the mouth full and red, upturned in a pout.

"Benny. I have no words," he said, his voice high and boyish, the words clear.

"Now, I know that ain't true," Benny said, smiling a little.

"Can you help us understand? I know you don't owe us anything, but how? How are you here, standing in front of me?" He took a few steps closer to Benny, his gaze locked onto his face.

The curiosity in the vampire's face was more than a passing interest, Benny saw that clearly enough. Julian couldn't understand how he'd made it back, and that made the vampire afraid.

"I found a way back," Benny said simply.

"From Hell?"

"Right next door, as far as I could tell," he corrected him.

"Next door? What's that?" the vampire asked, eyes narrowing slightly as if he was afraid that Benny was actually lying to him.

"Oh, I think I'll just have to show you. Julian," he said softly.

"How do you –" Julian turned away abruptly, face pulled into an expression of petulance.

Benny saw Sorento's surprise, tempered instantly, his face blank but his dark eyes avid.

"You'd be surprised at how easy it is to find out things these days, Julian. About pretty much anything," Benny explained gently. "That harpsichord, that left a good trail. Led right to the spoiled son of Englishman who immigrated to the New World in 1841 and blew his parent's fortune in a matter of three years."

"Silence!"

"Oh no," Benny said, smiling his three-cornered smile. "No, I ain't nearly done."

"I know it won't change anything, but I regretted having you killed. When it was all done, I wailed when I saw you in all those pieces," Julian said quickly, his face filled with saccharine regret. Benny looked at him and wondered how he could have ever have found this creature in front of him all-powerful.

"Yes, Father. That's when you decided to turn his cow," Sorento added somewhat spitefully.

"Poor So-So is bitter because your "cow" outranks him now," Julian said dryly, glancing at the younger vampire.

Benny ignored both comments. "Why didn't you let her die? She meant nothing to you."

"But she meant everything to you," The vampire said viciously. "If that's all I could salvage from my wayward son – the woman he defied his maker for – I wanted someone to remember you by."

Spoiled, petty, vindictive, rather stupid. Benny looked at him and let out his breath. For years, he'd lived in awe of the child-man in front of him. Then in fear. Now, finally, he could see him as he truly was and there was nothing in him to inspire either emotion.

"You've lived too long with too little purpose, Julian."

He heard Sorento's sharply indrawn breath. Saw the old vampire's eyes widen.

"I suppose you coming back from the dead – well, that's the definition of mutiny, isn't it? All of this has me feeling so... tired," Julian said languidly, but his eyes were bright with hatred.

"You should have let me go."

"But, Benny, I don't let things go," Julian snapped, as if that was self-evident.

"Really? You lived so long, how is it you have so little, hmm?" He looked curiously at the vampire. "Nothing but a beat-up old harpsichord and nest of hyenas."

"I have the sea," Julian said, not hearing the defensiveness in his own voice. "And I have Andrea."

"No. You don't have her," Benny said, holding up the handcuffs that had been around his wrists. "At least that much I know."

Sorento's face spasmed in fury. "Oh, that dumb bitch."

* * *

Dean dragged the body down to the room, pulling it inside. Nothing he could do about the blood stains that smeared the wooden boards of the hall floor. He straightened up then froze. Boots. Running. Lifting _Purgatory_, he moved silently across the room and behind the door. The first vampire to enter barely had time to glimpse the body of its nest mate on the floor, the head bouncing over the floor and rolling to come to rest in the corner. The second ducked and spun around, long arms reaching out for him and he shifted his position automatically, seeing where the vampire held his weight, a long stride taking him to its side, the stone blade whistling slightly with the speed of its passage through the air. The head flew out through the open doorway and hit the wall on the other side, almost ricocheting back into the room.

Dean looked down sourly. Four bodies would take too damned long to get out of sight. He'd just have to take the risk that the balloon would go up while he was looking for Benny. Four down anyway, he thought, that'd help, although he didn't know how many were in the house.

He walked out of the room, stepping over the bodies, and up the hall. His mouth curved up a little at the thought of what he was doing, hunting vampires on his own through a nest in search of his vampire friend. Talk about losing perspective, he thought, a little derisively. It had taken him a long time to believe in the vampire. A long time and a lot of action. He'd seen Benny's face, when he'd come for him and cut him down. The vampire had tried to hide his reactions, looking away but he'd seen it. And it hadn't been the first time. He'd seen the same expression on his brother's face, that combination of fear and worry and revulsion, rising out of a disbelief that couldn't be sustained in the face of what their own eyes had told them.

Both times had brought him back, pulled him out of a place that he couldn't remember, didn't know, but was inside of him, somewhere. He knew that he'd fallen, from the edge he walked, but he couldn't remember how or why or what he did at those times. Where he went.

He shook his head impatiently, swinging the axe up. He didn't have time for self-examination now, he thought, shoving it all aside and down and away. He turned the corner at the end of the hall and pulled his attention back to what he needed to do. There were a lot more vampires that he still had to deal with. He wasn't about to leave any of them alive.

* * *

Benny watched the vampire's muscles tighten and smiled. Sorento launched himself forward, the big, wide, clumsy attack requiring only the smallest change in position to avoid. Benny gripped his wrist as it passed him, snapping on the handcuff and swinging Sorento around on the fulcrum of his shoulder into the armoire that stood against the wall. The vampire dropped his curved blade as he hit, bouncing off it as he was dragged around again, Benny's knee driving into his abdomen, his knees giving way. Benny slammed his foot down onto the empty cuff and caught a handful of Sorento's hair, yanking his head back.

"When the hell did you learn to fight like that?" The vampire asked incredulously. Benny couldn't stop the astonished laugh at the question.

"I've had a lot of practice," he murmured, and swung the knife, the blade cutting through tendon and muscle and bone is a smooth sweep, his hand lifting the head free and dropping it as Sorento's body fell forward.

He looked at Julian, holding his arms out, and released the knife, its clatter filling the silence between them.

"You just gonna sit there?" he asked, wanting nothing more than for the vampire to come for him. He'd had practice, alright, he'd had so much practice that despite what he knew of the powers of the old vampires, he was ready to trust himself against Julian bare-handed.

"You're right. I've been here so, so long, Benny, seen all the outcomes, all the patterns a trillion times," Julian said slowly as Benny walked closer to him. "It all means so little. This universe is a pyramid of despair, nothing else."

"A little dark," Benny commented. And long. Julian liked to hear himself talk.

The vampire looked up at him. "I am evil, after all. At least I've had that much to keep me cold at night."

"You're not evil, Julian," Benny said, with a gentle mockery. "You're a child, malicious, spiteful, but you haven't seen evil, haven't felt it, haven't had it gnaw on your bones in the night."

He watched the vampire's eyes widen, understanding slowly dawning in them that his fledgling, the one he'd created from boredom, was no longer his child. No longer feared him. No longer even considered him to be dangerous.

"What happened to you, Benny?" Julian whispered.

"Patience, Julian. Patience and the lessons of God in a place where he didn't exist," Benny smiled.

"Philosophy, Benny? Theology, even? But you were always like that. Everything had to be thought about, considered."

"You know what Socrates said about a life unconsidered."

"Yes, I do," the vampire snapped, stung by the sly insinuation. "But what we have in us? Benny, that's not life. That's what you still don't get. That's why it's always been so hard for you, my poor Benjamin."

Julian straightened up, drawing himself to his full height, uncomfortably aware that Benny was taller. And heavier. He hardly saw the hands flash out, fingers closing around his shoulders but he felt their grip, driving into the smooth, ageless flesh and lifting him. He was flung, like a doll, into the diamond-paned doors of the bookshelves and felt himself fall to the floor, glass surrounding him, blood, his own, trickling down his face and over his lips. He tasted it with the tip of his tongue.

"Get up," Benny growled.

"This is the one last thing I can take from you," Julian said, laughing up at him.

"No. You try, damn it. You try and kill me again."

"This is my story, you gnat," the vampire spat at him, face twisting up.

"Get up!"

"It ends the way I choose, not you."

"No," Benny leaned forward and gripped the front of Julian's sweater, hauling him to his feet. "Never again. But at least I can finally show you something new, old man."

He slid the switchblade from the inside of his coat, the knife flicking out with a small click.

"A whole new world."

Julian's gaze shifted from Benny's face to the blade, almost fascinated.

"Be sure to give my regards to Sorento, when you see him," Benny said softly and slashed. The blade was too short to take the head in one cut, but it severed the windpipe and vocal chords, and Julian's blood poured out from the deep slash, ice cold and running across the floor. Benny caught hold of his hair and hacked the rest of the way through, tossing the head aside.

* * *

He walked into the foyer, glancing at Andrea as he crossed to the harpsichord and laid the knife on it.

"The old man is dead," he said quietly. He turned to her and held out his hand. "Let's go."

Andrea took his hand, and stepped forward, then stopped. Benny turned back to her.

"Where, Benny?"

The relief that filled him, bubbling up after the long years, lit his eyes as he looked at her. "What are you talking about? Anywhere."

Andrea looked down and he felt that relief falter and slip inside him.

"You're not leaving here, are you?"

The revelation that had hit him when he'd first seen her, had seen her smooth, unmarked skin, the knowledge that he hadn't wanted to know, hadn't wanted to feel or understand in any way came to him then, and it crushed the last of his hope.

"And you never were."

"We have everything we need right here," she said, looking up at him, missing the pain in his eyes, her voice gaining excitement as she outlined her thoughts, her hand rising to brush against his temple. "The operation is still perfect. We can ride the high seas, plunder together. We can have the life we always wanted."

He looked down at her, and made himself face what was in her eyes now. "What I wanted was to leave a burning crater behind," he said slowly, every word scraping through a throat that was filled with glass, filled with pain. "I wanted to put your memory to rest."

Andrea stared at him in confusion. "But I'm not a memory. Benny, I'm right here."

He looked at the long braid that hung over her shoulder, lifted his hand and ran his fingers over it, once last time. "What I loved – it ain't here anymore," he said softly, raising his gaze slowly to hers. "It was snuffed out a long time ago by monsters like me ... like what you've become."

He watched her back away from him, one step, then another. In her face, he saw understanding, of a sort, perhaps. Understanding finally that what he'd loved, so much that he'd have given anything, done anything, been anything for her, had been her humanity.

"You think you're better than me now?" she asked stiffly, and he saw her anger rising.

"No," he answered simply. "I think we're all damned."

For a moment, he thought she might accept it. Then he realised that she couldn't. Or wouldn't. The vampire curse was strong inside of her and whatever had been left of her after she'd made her first kill had long since been eaten away. She smelled of roses, rotting on the vine and the dense, thick stench of a body buried shallowly in the woods.

He didn't move as her fangs descended, the growl rose up in her chest. Behind her, there was a dark shadow and it flickered. The sharp tip of the stone axe appeared under her ribs. Andrea's gaze flashed down to it and back to him, then Dean put his hand on her shoulder and pulled it out, the sideways slash taking her head with a single motion.

He looked at Benny as the vampire stared back at him, not knowing what in his friend's mind, seeing nothing but pain in the light blue eyes. Then Benny's gaze dropped slowly to the body on the floor and he saw a shudder shake him.

"Benny?"

Benny looked down at her. It was for the best, he knew that. He'd known it from the moment he'd seen the photograph, and it had been confirmed when he'd looked into her eyes again, seen not the vibrant, passionate, living woman he'd known, but the frozen, dead facsimile of her that Julian had created. If the hunter hadn't killed her, he would have had to. He knew it.

He just wished he could tell that to the breaking pieces inside of him. Wished that he could get that where it was hurting so much.

"Benny." Dean looked around, acutely aware that they were standing in a nest and he had no idea if there were more vampires than he'd thought.

Benny looked up at him. "Yeah."

"Time to go, man," he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the vampire's eyes. "Get it together; we gotta get out of here."

"There aren't any more, Dean," Benny said softly, his eyes closing briefly. "And I have something else to do."

"Now? What?"

"We have to burn this place to the ground."

* * *

Dean untied the line from the rocks and coiled it, tossing it into the boat as he moved to the other side of the bow. Behind him, the flames were reaching into the sky, a wild beacon to anyone with eyes. The house had been old, the timbers dry. It would burn out before anyone could get here to put it out.

They pushed the boat together over the coarse sand, then Benny stopped. Dean looked at him.

"Why'd you do it, Dean?" Benny stood still on the other side of the boat, looking down at the rails under his hands.

"Do what?" Dean asked warily, afraid that the conversation would be another where he was going to be forced into justifying what he'd seen as the right thing to do.

"Resurrect me." Benny looked at him tiredly.

_Not what he'd thought_, Dean realised, brows drawing together as Benny continued.

"You could have drained my soul into any culvert, and no one would have been the wiser."

_Goddamn it_, Dean thought furiously. _How could Benny not know –_ "What the hell are you talking about? Hey, you good?"

Benny looked at him. "Man ... I don't know what I am."

He turned away, jumping over the gunwale and into the boat as Dean stared after him, worried and frustrated and uncertain of what he was seeing. What the hell did that mean, that he didn't know what he was? Benny had more humanity, more of whatever it was that made humans human, than a lot of the humans he'd met. _But the other shoe, it always drops, right? Right, Dean?_ He shunted the thought aside irritably. He didn't know what he was either. It didn't make a difference so long as they both knew what they were doing. Killing monsters. Not being monsters. Keeping people safe. Keeping each other safe. Watching each other's backs.

He shoved the boat off the shingle and scrambled on board, glancing at Benny as he started the outboard, then away as the launch turned in a wide circle and headed back for the mainland. The house was burning furiously against the black night sky, the flames leaping and jumping and he could hear the roar of it faintly, even over the motor.

Fucking shades of grey. Again. Fucking him over. Fucking everything up. He thought of Benny's voice, over the rumble of the engine, soft in the darkness of the car, talking about love as if it had saved him, saved him from being something, or becoming something that could never be saved. Women were people too, he wanted to shout at the vampire. They have weaknesses. They can't save you. He didn't think that Benny's sudden lurch into melancholy had been just about the woman. He thought that maybe the vampire had lost his hope with her death. The hope that he could be more than what he was, could be redeemed somehow.

He scowled as he watched the distant lights drawing slowly closer. Sometimes you had to face the fact that nothing could redeem you from the things that had happened, the things that had been done to you or that – that you had done. There was no healing possible for some wounds. No atonement great enough to wipe away some stains on the soul. He'd thought the vampire knew that, but apparently not.

He didn't look for redemption. Not any more. He was who he was. No one could look at all of him, the sum of his experiences and the way it had shaped him, and offer any hope of salvation. He knew that. He'd accepted that. He was broken into so many pieces that even finding them all was no longer possible. So be it. He was a hunter and salvation wasn't a necessity, wasn't a job requirement.

* * *

The launch came up to the pontoon steadily and Dean saw his brother standing on the fixed concrete dock, staring down at him. _Perfect_, he thought, throwing the line to him, as Benny gentled the launch alongside the floating jetty and turned off the outboard.

He tossed their bags onto the pontoon and climbed out, walking up to where Sam was tying on the forward mooring line. Sam rose to his feet slowly, peering around Dean as Benny climbed from the boat onto the dock.

_Here we go_, Dean thought as Benny stopped beside. He looked down, unable to say to anything, to either of them.

"I'm Benny," Benny said quietly, offering his hand to Sam. Sam looked at it and took it, feeling the strength in the fingers, and the cold of the hand around his.

"Heard a lot about you, Sam," Benny added.

_Cold_. Dean had been with him every minute since he'd gotten out of Purgatory. Knew his name. _Heard a lot about you_. The pieces fell together smoothly, slowly, and time telescoped out in Sam's mind, the connections leaping together. Monster. Vampire. Benny.

He reached for the sheath on his hip, thumb pushing back the stud that held the long knife in place, releasing it. Benny looked down, mouth curving up a little, and Sam's fingers began to close around the hilt of the knife, his grip tightening slightly on the vampire's hand. Glancing at Dean, Sam saw his brother's gaze on the knife as well.

Dean raised his eyes, meeting Sam's and shook his head slightly.

_Don't, Sam._

_Vampire, Dean. _

_Please. Don't._

_Why?_

_Trust me._

_Goddamn you._

Sam left his hand resting on the hilt and released Benny's hand, his eyes on his brother's face, muscle jumping at the point of his jaw.

"I can see you two have a lot to talk about," Benny said dryly, glancing again at the long knife sheathed at Sam's side. He slapped his hand against Dean's arm lightly and bent to pick up his gear bag. Dean looked down as Benny stepped between the brothers slowly, a flickered look at Sam as he passed him, returned with a chilling look from the taller man.

Dean lifted his head as Benny moved away. In his brother's face he could see pretty much everything he'd expected to see. Fury. Confusion. Distrust. All the usual suspects.

And there wasn't a thing he could say to him.

* * *

_**I-90 E, Idaho**_

Sam stared out through the windshield, and turned his iPod up again slightly. The thumping bass of the song on the car stereo came through the chassis to his feet, at odds with the song playing through the headphones on his ears. He slid a sideways glance across to his brother, seeing the hard profile that had been unchanged for the last four hundred miles.

Dean didn't want to talk. He got it. Happened, from time to time. The record was three days, from Maine to Arizona. Neither of them had said a single word. At least not to each other. He couldn't remember what that fight had been about now.

This was different, he thought. This was … he didn't know what this was. Dean, protecting a vampire. A _vampire_. He couldn't make the thought gel properly.

He couldn't get the image out of his mind, of Dean's face during the silent exchange on the docks. It hadn't been pleading, not quite that far. But god, it had been close. Why?

A thought snuck in and he straightened slightly in his seat. Maybe Dean hadn't wanted to choose, to be forced into making a choice. Between him … and the vamp. He felt an icy shiver careen down his neck. Was that it? Had it gone that far?

He turned his head to look at his brother. He thought it might've. He was too aware that he didn't know his brother any more. Not really. Not enough to be able to predict him, what he might do, or how he would feel about it. He shifted his gaze back to the windshield, to the road unwinding ahead of them, the light traffic flowing along with them.

Maybe he never had known him all that well.

* * *

_**I-90 E, South Dakota**_

The road was almost empty, a couple of taillights up ahead, a few bright white lights behind him, but the car was rumbling smoothly along on her own. He rubbed a hand over his jaw and glanced at Sam, sleeping uncomfortably in the corner between the seat and the door.

For the first time in his life, he could easily see a future that didn't include Sam. At least didn't include him on a day-to-day basis, he thought. And the thought didn't make him feel uneasy or as if he was being disloyal or not doing his job.

His brother had been right, back in wherever it was they'd been. He needed to see the possibility that they wanted different things. Needed different things. He could see how defensive and wound-up Sam was, could feel him watching him, looking for signs of cracks or holes since he'd returned. He'd been grateful, mostly, for that when he'd been trying to find his way again. He still was. But it wasn't working. Wasn't a partnership anymore.

Despite the fact that Benny had lost it on the island, hunting with him had been smooth – and easy. And it hadn't been like that with Sam for a long time. And in that moment, when Sam had realised that Benny was a vampire, and had gone for the knife, when he'd realised that he might have to choose between them, all the things – all the lies he'd told himself, all the pretence that he and his brother could make it work out – all the secrets that were buried in both of them and would likely never see the light of the day … all that had crashed down onto him and he'd had to face it.

He loved his brother. That hadn't changed, wasn't the issue. The thing was that he'd changed. Somewhere down there he'd shed the last bit of the shell of John Winchester he'd been hiding behind and what'd come out through the portal and back to the real world was just him. He frowned at the road. He didn't feel that different. More focussed. Not drowning in guilt. Not even acknowledging guilt, he thought.

He wasn't going to apologise to Sam for Benny. The conversation would happen sooner or later, whether he wanted it or not. And he knew what would be raised when it did. What had happened in the past was irrelevant, he thought. People changed. He'd changed. Sam could accept it. Or not. That was his choice.

He looked at his watch. He was getting tired, and he couldn't tell if it was the driving or the thoughts. He looked along the signs and decided to pull off. He could get an hour of sleep, be okay to keep going. The nightmares hadn't gone. But they didn't get a strong hold of him in just an hour. He could deal.


	12. Chapter 12 Lines in the Sand

**Chapter 12 Lines in the Sand**

* * *

_**Kearney, Missouri**_

Mary Lew pulled into the gas station and parked beside the pump, getting out and filling the tank of her car. She replaced the nozzle and the fuel cap and leaned in through the window of the driver's door to get her purse, wondering distractedly if they had enough milk at home, or if she should get another gallon.

_Just get it_, she told herself, _won't go to waste_, going to the glass-fronted fridge when she entered the store, and pulling out the container. At the counter, four kids were horsing around while they waited for their sodas to be rung up. She looked at one of them, brow creasing as she recognised him.

"Michael?"

He looked around, half-smiling awkwardly at her as his friends quietened immediately. "Hey, Mrs Lew."

"Can you tell your mother, I'll be around Tuesday with the church sale boxes?"

"Sure, Mrs Lew."

"Thanks," she said smiling at the boys. "You have a good night."

"Yes, Mrs Lew," Michael left his money sitting on the counter as his friends crowded out with him.

"Yes, Mrs Lew," one of them said in a high voice.

"Thank you, Mrs Lew," another laughed beside him.

"Shut up," he said, glancing back over his shoulder at her apologetically and pushing them out the door.

"Kids," the clerk said, ringing up her fuel and the milk. "Here you go."

He pushed some of the coins sitting on the counter back to her, and took her twenty.

"Yeah, but weren't we all like that?" she said smiling, as she picked up the milk and change and turned around to go out.

"Huh, guess so." The clerk said with a shrug.

* * *

She pulled up and parked outside a house, feeling her heart thundering in her chest, her chest rise and fall with the rage that filled her. Getting out of the car, she stalked over to the carport, looking at her husband as he lay under the engine of his car.

"Hey, hon. Just in time. Grab me a cold one, would ya?" He smiled up at her.

"Why don't you have Sara Alcott get it for you?" Mary snarled furiously, staring at him.

'What?'

Mary kicked the jack from the front end and the car fell on top of him, sump hitting his chest and compressing it, his rib cage fracturing.

"Oh, my God! Mary, help! Mary, what are you doing? Mary, what are you doing? Mary!" he gasped, shouting weakly, unable to take a deep breath, feeling the bones grinding against each other.

Mary Lew walked to the door, opening it and getting in, slamming it shut behind her.

"Help me!"

The engine started and a scream cut above the noise of the motor. Mary shifted into first and put her foot down on the accelerator as hard as she could, hearing the scream stop as she pulled away.

* * *

_**Onawa, Iowa**_

Dean looked at the phone in his hand. Thirty one police departments were listed in the scanner app, and he scrolled through those closest, looking at the updates. He was leaning against the car as he waited for Sam to get the food. So far the one-eighty-seven in Kearney, Missouri, was the most promising.

"Heads up," Sam said, holding out the soda as he walked past his brother. Dean glanced up and took it, staring at the screen.

"I caught wind of a case on this police scanner. Sounds like our kind of thing," he said as he turned around.

Sam stopped on the other side of the car, looking at him incredulously. "I wasn't even gone ten minutes."

"Okay," Dean said, the wide smile he gave his brother not close to reaching his eyes. "That matters why?"

Sam felt the sharp prickle of anger rising at his brother's casual dismissal. For days, Dean hadn't said a word. Not one. Hadn't responded to anything he'd said either, except with occasional grunts.

"I don't know, Dean," he said sarcastically. "How about because you haven't said a word to me since Prentiss Island? And now, what? You want me to shut up and ride shotgun and act like nothing happened?"

Dean drew in a breath, putting the phone in his pocket and leaning on the hood, the pretence of everything's-fine vanishing from his face. "You want to talk about Benny? Fine. Let's talk."

"Okay," Sam said, leaning forward a little. "How about he's a vampire?"

"He's also the reason I'm topside and not roasting on a spit in Purgatory. Anything else?" Dean answered shortly, raising a brow. He wasn't sure what he was doing, playing push to Sam's shove. Maybe he was just sick of being told what not to do.

_Don't react, just ask_, Sam told himself, feeling that big brother vibe coming off Dean again, that I-know-better-than-you vibe. "Don't pretend I don't get it. I know you had to do what you had to down there."

"I highly doubt you get anything about Purgatory," Dean contradicted him curtly.

"But you're out now, and Benny's still breathing," Sam said, ignoring the last comment. "Why?"

Dean looked at his brother. There wasn't a hope in hell of telling Sam what had happened down there. He couldn't describe it, couldn't explain it, couldn't express it. And he didn't feel he had to justify his decisions to anyone, least of all the brother who'd forgotten about him.

"He's my friend, Sam," Dean said carefully.

Sam snorted, his eyes cutting to one side. "And what about my friend, Amy? She was what? 'Cause you sure as hell didn't have a problem ganking her," he said.

"Well, I guess people change, don't they? We let that werewolf Kate go, didn't we?"

"She was different. She was–," Sam stopped suddenly, staring at Dean. "You think Benny's different? He tell you he's not drinking live blood or something?"

Dean's gaze cut away and Sam exhaled sharply. All the answer he needed. "And you believe him."

He shook his head, realising that he couldn't go any further with this argument. Dean had made up his mind, and like his father, that was the end of it. Neither of them had ever listened after that. "Wow. Okay. You know, you're right. People do change."

Dean watched him, seeing Sam filing away the information for now, knowing it would come up again later when his brother had had more time to think about it. He knew the way it worked. And he knew he didn't want to keep going over this every time Sam got a new idea about it, found another angle.

"Yeah. I got a vampire buddy, and you turn your phone off for a year," he said pointedly.

Sam's head snapped back to him, his mouth thinning as he bit back his anger at the reminder, his brother's way of having the last word. "Don't turn this on me."

Dean straightened up unhurriedly, watching him, every bit of the emotion that had been in his face a second ago, gone. "Look, Benny slips up and some other hunter turns his lights out, so be it," he said casually.

Sam knew that look too. "But it's not gonna be you, right?"

Dean considered him for a long moment, not answering, then he picked up his soda and turned to the door. "You coming or not?"

Sam watched him open the driver's door and get in, picking up his food and drink and going to the other door before his brother started the engine and pulled out without him. It wasn't over. The lines had just been drawn out in the sand.

* * *

_**Kearney, Missouri**_

Dean pulled up out the front of the house as an ambulance pulled out of the driveway. Set back from the street a little way, the house was a low two-storey, a white-picket fence lining the drive and front yard tidily. They could see the cops moving around the carport area through the garden.

"So, guy's old lady comes home while he's working underneath his ride, puts the pedal to the metal, and takes half his head off," Dean said, looking around the neighbourhood.

"What, that's it?" Sam said, brow creasing.

"Yeah, in a nutshell. She says she blacked out, doesn't remember a damn thing." Dean nodded, ignoring the tone, looking at the house.

"Well, that sounds like insanity," Sam said firmly.

"Maybe."

"So, how does that make this our kind of thing?" Sam pressed, looking at his brother. Getting a real job was one thing, but trying to make something explicable fit just to work? That wasn't happening.

Dean exhaled audibly, turning back to him. "Because, Sam, Kevin's in the wind, okay? You're sulking around like a eunuch in a whorehouse, and I can't help but ask myself, when is decapitation not my thing?"

He got out of the car, and Sam blinked. _Eunuch in a whorehouse?_ He shook his head. They'd stopped up the interstate to get cleaned up and changed into the suits, a tacit truce in place with the prospect of the job. The two-hour-old armistice was already breaking apart. He got out and followed Dean up the concreted drive to the line of crime tape.

"Whoa, whoa," the deputy standing by a patrol car came bounding over to them, eyes widening slightly as he took the badges they took out and held up. "FBI?"

Sam's smile was perfunctory. "Yeah, happened to be in the neighbourhood."

"First a Texas Ranger, now you guys?" The deputy shook his head.

Dean frowned. "Texas Ranger?"

"Yes, sir. Right over there." He turned and pointed down the drive. Two men stood talking. The closest stood with his back to them, jeans, a fringed leather jacket and a wide-brimmed hat overtly out of place in front of the suburban house. There was something about the way he stood, Dean thought …

"Oh, you got to be kidding me," he groaned, recognising the hipshot stance.

He ducked under the tape and walked up behind the men.

"Hey, Chuck Norris."

Garth Fitzgerald III turned around, eyes widening. "Sam? Dean? Oh … where have you guys been?"

Sam looked around uncomfortably. "Shh."

Garth ignored the noise, stepping close and throwing his arms around him. Sam froze, teeth clenched together.

"Forgot he was a hugger," he muttered, mostly to himself.

Garth let him go and turned to Dean. "Come here!"

"All right. Okay," Dean said, looking away as the scrawny, pseudo-cowboy hugged him tightly. "We're still – we're still working here," he said, disengaging himself.

Looking from one to the other, Garth grinned widely. "Uh, you guys have no idea how much I missed you."

Dean looked at the young man standing behind them. "Um, excuse us, would you?"

"Yeah, we'll be right back," Garth added, as the man nodded.

He followed Dean and Sam a few yards along the drive.

"A Texas Ranger, Garth? Seriously? We're in Missouri." Dean looked at the man's clothes, brow wrinkling.

"What? Come on. I look like a funeral director in one of those," he said, gesturing at their suits. "Wow. I heard some chatter you two were back in the batter's box, but I didn't believe it till now."

From his jacket, a song started playing and he opened the side, pulling out one of three cells that were tucked into pockets sewn into the lining. Dean looked at Sam, one brow lifted.

"Oh, uh, one sec. Um...," he said, lifting it to his ear. "Yo, Earl. What you got? A revenant. Okay, uh, you'll need a casket and some silver spikes. Oh, and don't get bit. No, it won't turn you, but it will hurt like hell. Okay, so, once you got all that, nail that sucker in, bury him, and throw away the key. Okay? All right. Hasta."

"What are you doing?" Dean stared at him.

"My job, hombre," Garth answered, tucking the phone back into its slot.

"Your job?"

"Yeah." He looked at Dean steadily.

"And since when is giving monster-killing advice your job?"

Garth shrugged. "Bobby was gone. You two were MIA. It was a weird time. Somebody had to step in and take up the slack." He glanced back over his shoulder and cleared his throat. "All right. Let's just get back to work, and we'll talk about this later, all right?"

He turned back to the young man waiting in front of the garage and walked back to him.

Dean looked at his brother uncertainly. "Did Garth just tell us what to do?"

Sam looked baffled. "Seemed like that to me."

He walked back to Garth and the young man, hearing Dean behind him. For a moment, he thought, the tension between them had vanished, driven out by the peculiarities of having to deal with Garth. He wondered if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

"Uh, Scott Lew," Garth said, waving at Dean and Sam. "These gentlemen here are with the FBI. Mr. Lew's parents were the individuals involved in this... unfortunate situation."

"Sorry for your loss." Dean said automatically.

"Just a few questions, Mr. Lew. Um, by any chance were your parents having ... marital problems?"

"No. Uh, no more than anyone else," Scott said, shaking his head.

"What about your mother's health? Could this have been a seizure, a stroke, anything that might help explain this?" Sam continued, running through his mind for the usual list of normal explanations.

"I don't think so," Scott said firmly. "Um, they're checking her out at the, um, hospital right now."

"What about stranger behaviour?" Dean interjected.

"Stranger?" The young man stared at Dean. "How?"

"Hearing voices, seeing things – your mother mention anything like that?"

Scott shook his head. "My parents were married for thirty years – high-school sweethearts." He looked back to Sam. "There's no good explanation for why this happened, no matter where you want to look."

"Okay, well, thank you, Scott. We'll be in touch." Garth nodded, reaching out to squeeze the man's arm reassuringly.

Scott looked at them and walked away.

Dean turned back to Garth, swallowing his desire to point out – again – the incredible inappropriateness of the man's outfit. Garth was here, and the question was, did they work with him, or cut him loose. He and Sam were still on very shaky ground, he thought. It wouldn't hurt to have a diversion around, someone to … buffer … their necessary interactions.

* * *

Dean watched as Sam ran the EMF over the area where the vic's car had been parked. The meter was showing nothing. He could see the stiffness of Sam's shoulders, knew he was already making up his mind that there was nothing here.

"No EMF. No traces of sulphur anywhere," Sam said, getting to his feet. "Like I thought – bust."

_And there it was_, Dean thought sourly.

"Hold on there, Sam," Garth said, as he poked around the workbench at the other end of the carport. "There's a lot of things to factor in here. Uh, it happened last night, so the readings could be cold by now."

Dean smiled. "Good point."

He caught Sam's sharp glance at him from the corner of his eye.

"And, uh, even if there was any sulphur, Barney Fife and his crew probably contaminated the whole crime scene and any evidence that was here with it," Garth added, taking a step toward them and looking at Sam.

"He's on a roll." Dean looked at Sam smugly.

"That's one word for it," Sam muttered.

"Uh, guys, I think I found something." Garth picked up one foot, looking down at it. A sticky green substance stretched from the concrete floor to the bottom of his boot.

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Is that gum, or is that ectoplasm?"

"Ectoplasm is usually black, right?" Sam said, staring at it.

Garth lifted his foot higher, dipping his finger into the goo and lifting it to his nose, inhaling and touching it to his tongue. "Definitely ectoplasm."

Dean and Sam exchanged a look, wearing identical expressions of revulsion.

He looked up at them. "So, what are we thinking – uh, some kind of ghost, right?"

Dean looked at Sam, snapping his fingers. Sam shook his head, a slight smile lifting his mouth. There were still things about his brother that were completely predictable, after all.

A different song played from Garth's jacket and he pulled another cell. "Uh, Ranger McCrae here."

Dean closed his eyes. "One of those things rings Hammer, I'm throwing down."

"Oh, great. Okay. Okay," Garth said, writing something onto his hand. "Thanks, Doc." He ended the call and looked at them.

"Asked the coroner to drop me a line in case the autopsy turned up anything... unusual. And guess what. Our dead guy had the word "Alcott" –" He lifted his hand and held it up. "– carved into his chest."

Sam frowned. "With what?"

"Coroner's best guess? His wife, Mary's fingernails." Garth answered.

Dean rubbed a hand along his jaw. "Let's go see her."

Heading back down the drive, he could feel Sam twitching beside him. He stopped at the car, Sam heading around the front to the passenger and looked at Garth who'd stopped beside him.

"We should, uh, probably take our own rides," he said, suddenly realising that Garth was thinking of joining them.

From across the roof, Sam nodded vehemently. "Yeah, we might have to split up if this woman has a lead."

"Um, okay, sure," Garth nodded and turned away and Dean got into the car with a deep sigh of relief, echoed by Sam as he got in on the other side.

"We're not working … with … him, are we?" Sam asked, turning to look at Dean.

Dean started the engine. "He was here first."

"Then let's leave him to it?" Sam stared through the windshield. "He can handle it."

Dean smiled, glancing at him. "You think?"

"Don't tell me you're okay with the-the Hunter's Help Line he's got going, Dean," Sam said irritably.

"No, but maybe he's right," he said, pulling out and following Garth's Pacer down the road. "Maybe there was a need and he's just filling it."

"Yeah? Where's he getting the time to do the research if he's out on jobs?" Sam asked belligerently. "He _tasted_ that ectoplasm. How's he even still alive?"

"I don't know, man," Dean said, laughing a little uncomfortably at the memory. "Look, so far all we know is that there's some kind of ghost activity here. That's it." He flicked a sideways look at his brother. "Let's see what else we find out before we decide to stay or go."

"Alright." Sam exhaled softly. "But he's your _friend_, Dean. We have to split up, you're taking him."

Dean's mouth curled into a derisive twist.

* * *

Dean glanced around the hospital room. Like a million others, except that the patient was handcuffed to the bed and a cop was standing guard outside. He looked at Mrs Lew. She looked very much worse for wear, he thought, eyelids swollen and eyes bloodshot from crying.

"Mrs. Lew, can you tell us what happened?" Sam asked quietly.

"I was at the store getting groceries, and the next thing I know, my son Scott finds me in the driveway," Mrs Lew said. She looked down at the blanket covering her, and her voice diminished. "And Chester was ..."

"Do you remember anything at all about what happened? Um... Chester dying?" Sam asked gently.

Mary Lew shook her head, frowning. "Not really." She looked up at him. "Bits and pieces, I guess."

"Such as?" Dean asked.

She looked at him, and he saw the memories come back to her, filling her eyes. "I remember his screams ... the smell of burnt rubber, and ..." She looked up at Sam, her face bewildered. "I remember feeling so angry – just uncontrollable rage, like I wasn't myself. And after it was over, all that anger was – just gone."

"Uh, ma'am, does the word "Alcott" mean anything to you?" Garth asked.

Dean watched the bewilderment and sorrow disappear from Mrs Lew's face as if wiped away, her fist clenching suddenly, pulling at the cuff.

"What does she have to do with anything?" she asked, looking from Garth to Sam.

"It's a she?" Sam prompted.

"Oh yes. My husband, Chester, and I were going steady in high school for a few years already when we had a big fight," she said, shaking her head slightly.

"What about?" Dean asked.

"Something stupid, I'm sure. It was around prom, and so he took Sara Alcott as his date instead of me."

Dean kept his expression neutral. It didn't seem like that big a deal, not enough for the reaction she'd shown, the way her hand had clenched up. And high school … that had been years ago, decades ago … what could keep that kind of feeling going all that time?

"So, this Sara Alcott was a rival for your husband's affections?" Garth looked at her.

"Sara had one night with him," Mrs Lew said coldly to him. "Whereas I was with Chester for thirty-seven years."

Sam watched her face fall suddenly, tears spilling from beneath her lashes.

"Of course, right. Sure," he said hurriedly. "Um, just one more question. Um... Is... Ms. Alcott still alive?"

"So far as I know, yes." She looked up at him in confusion.

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Lew," Dean said quietly, turning away. Aside from the fact that the woman had some kind of serious issues with trust, he couldn't see that there was a connection at all.

* * *

They came out of the front doors of the hospital and Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam.

"Let me get this straight. This poor guy goes to prom with some girl over thirty years ago, and because of that, he is now a pancake?"

"If this is a ghost, maybe it's some sort of possession?" Sam suggested. He stopped and frowned as something caught at his mind, some memory, some similarity. For a moment it was there, then it vanished and he tried to retrieve it, to get back that odd feeling of familiarity.

"What are you talking about? You heard her. Alcott's alive," Dean said, shaking his head. He glanced at the car, parked in front of them then turned back to his brother, brows drawing together a little as he took in Sam's expression.

"Well, we're definitely gonna want to talk to her," Garth said, stopping beside them.

"Yeah, sounds like a plan," Dean said, going to the driver's door of the Impala. "Did we eat yet?"

* * *

The Rebel Yell was small and dark, but the scents wafting from the kitchen and the bottles of ice-cold beer more than made up for its lack in aestheticism, Dean decided, leaning on the table and swallowing a mouthful.

To one side of the room, a pool table was occupied, but otherwise the place was empty, some music playing so low that he could hardly make it out. A small stage on the other side of the room had a large Confederacy flag hanging behind it, suggesting the music favoured in the region.

He picked up his second burger and glanced up as a waitress brought another plate of anonymously fried somethings to Garth.

"There you go, hon," she said, putting the plate in front of him.

"Mmm. Thanks. Keep 'em coming," he smiled at her with a mouthful of food.

"All right."

Garth speared another bite. "So, Dean, give me the skinny. Where were you this past year?"

"Why don't we save what I did on my summer vacation for another time?" he said, smiling discouragingly at Garth.

"Aw, come on," Garth wheedled.

Dean looked at him for a moment, realising he wasn't going to be able to brush off the man's interest. He glanced at Sam.

"All right. I was in Purgatory," he said, looking at Garth, then taking a mouthful of beer

Garth looked quizzically at Sam, then back to him. "Like the _Purgatory_ Purgatory?"

"No, the one in Miami," Dean said flatly.

Garth wiped his mouth. "So how'd you get out?"

Dean hesitated, and saw Sam shift beside him, his expression bright and interested. He sighed inwardly and looked around the room, gesturing at the blue and red flags that were prominently displayed.

"These people know the Civil War's over, right?"

Garth ate another deep-fried something from his plate. "Mm. That's a touchy subject around these parts. See, Missouri was a border state; both the Union and the Confederacy claimed it. It didn't secede until after 1861, so, half the men were Confederate, the other half were the Union, sometimes even the families were split, you know, the brother against brother thing."

Dean looked at him thoughtfully. "You are full of surprises, Garth."

"I try," he said through a mouthful.

* * *

Scott Lew pulled up outside the grocery store as his phone rang. He stopped the engine and picked it up.

"Hey, hon. Uh, just, uh, grabbing some joe on the way to the hospital, gonna bring Mom her stuff."

He looked through the windshield, grimacing as he saw a man wave at him, then walk into the store. "Oh, crap. Jeff's here. Don't worry, I'll be fine. Okay. Love you."

_Perfect_. The day had been bad enough. He wasn't sure how much more he could take and he realised he should've just stayed in bed. He felt a faint tremble in his throat, the first sign that his asthma was going to play up. Looking at the seat next to him, he grabbed his inhaler and took a deep blast. _Just need to get the coffee and get out_, he told himself firmly. _No stress. No need to worry_.

He reached into his mother's purse and pulled out a couple of bills and a handful of change, holding them as he tucked the inhaler into his pocket. _Get the coffee and get out_, he thought.

Scott walked into the store and went to the coffee pot, lifting a takeout container and pouring the coffee into it.

"Hey, Scott, how's –," Jeff started as he came around the corner of the aisle, and stopped beside him. "Uh, look, I heard about what happened with your folks. I'm really sorry. If there's – there's anything – I mean, anything – that I can do, just – just ask, man. Please."

Scott turned his head slowly to look at him, face rigid and eyes dark. "How about getting me my money back …" He threw the hot liquid in the cup over Jeff's face and neck. "…Jeff?!"

Jeff fell to the ground, his hands lifted to his face, unable to touch the scalded skin, screaming as the pain ate into him, the burns turning red. Scott looked down at him coldly. _Not over yet. Not over yet. Not over yet_, ran through his mind like a record with a scratch and he caught sight of a bin full of shovels, lifting one out and standing over the man on the ground, his hands gripping the long shaft, holding the blade over Jeff's chest.

"Not over yet," he whispered and drove the shovel down, hearing the ribs crack as Jeff's scream rose sharply to a shriek.

* * *

Dean walked into the store, looking around. The body, covered now, lay in the aisle, evidence markers placed here and there. He walked over to it, taking in the size and direction of the blood spray that covered the items on the shelves to both sides, the pool visible under the body, the shovel that had been tagged but not yet bagged, lying beside the body.

"Huh," he commented. They'd just spoken to the officer who'd arrested Scott Lew outside. "This thing contagious?"

Sam looked around and frowned as he saw the refrigerated cabinet. "Check that out."

Dean read the word painted there. "'Sussex.' What is that, another name?"

"I don't know." He looked over the shelving to Garth, who turned away from the sheriff he'd been talking to and headed for them.

"Hey, what'd the cops say?" Sam asked.

Garth looked down and lifted his foot, green ectoplasm adhering to the sole of his boot. "Aw, come on."

He looked up at Sam. "Not much. Uh, Scott insisted he wasn't in control of himself. Says all he remembers is a red-hot rage."

Sam glanced at Dean. "So, what is this, some – some kind of family curse?"

"Gentlemen, surveillance is up but something is all screwy with it." Deputy Doug Wallace came up to the aisle, gesturing at the screen behind him.

They watched the attack, marred by a thick white line across the screen, precisely lining up with Scott Lew's head as he drove the shovel repeatedly into the body that was hidden by the shelving.

"Must be the camera," Wallace said, looking at them with a shrug.

"Yeah," Garth said. "Thank you, there, Deputy."

Dean looked from Sam to Garth. "You guys see the head? Ever seen anything like that before?"

"Like that? No way," Garth said, shaking his head.

"So?" Sam looked at him.

"So –" Dean started.

"So, I'm thinking we need to talk to Sara Alcott," Garth cut him off. "I found her – although these days, she goes by Sara Brown."

"How about this?" Sam said quickly. "I'll check her out, and you two see what you can find out about Sussex."

"Word." Garth nodded.

Dean looked at his brother expressionlessly. "Awesome."

Sam smiled at him and walked past. A couple of hours of Garth's company and Dean would either be happy to see him, or ready to kill himself, he thought.

* * *

The afternoon sunshine dappled the well-tended garden. The porch was shaded, protected from the light breeze that blew along the street but cool enough for Mrs Brown to have a shawl thrown over her shoulders as she studied the FBI agent sitting opposite her, drinking sugared iced tea and looking uncomfortable. Sara Brown, nee Alcott, sat with one leg drawn up, plum-coloured slacks showing off long, slim legs.

She looked at Sam curiously. "Now, I know you didn't come all this way for my sweet tea, Agent."

Sam smiled awkwardly. "No. Um, actually, I'm – I'm here about Chester Lew."

"Oh, yes. So sad," she said, and Sam thought whatever had happened between the two of them, it had been over a long time ago. There was no emotion in her voice.

"It is. Is it true you and Chester ... dated a ways back?" he asked, looking at her.

"Well, that is an odd question for the FBI, isn't it?" she said, her brows rising slightly.

Sam exhaled. "You wouldn't believe the awkward questions I've had to ask people."

"Yeah." She laughed at his expression. "Well, yes. Yes. Me and that old tomcat, Chester, we went to prom together. That's about it."

"And that's all?" Sam asked quizzically.

"Well," she sighed, her expression becoming frank. "I wasn't exactly a good girl, if that's what you mean."

Sam looked down, letting out his breath. _Yeah_, he thought, _that's what I mean. So much fun this part, asking women about their love-lives of decades ago. Really a blast._

She looked at him steadily. "And after that, I-I thought that Chester and I were going to make something of it, but it just wasn't meant to be." She glanced down, remembering. "And, uh, a week later, he eloped with Mary."

"Did you speak much to Mary or Chester again after that?"

"Well, it's a small town. I'd see them about, you know – picnics and such. But ... Mary kept Chester on a pretty short leash. Honestly, I'd moved on, but it seems she never did."

"And why do you think that is?"

"Well, I guess in her mind, I was a reminder of Chester's betrayal," she said, a little archly. She'd never understood herself. Chester had been looking for one little fling, a chance to sow his wild oats before he'd settled down with the girl he'd already known he wanted. Mary had taken the whole thing too hard, for what it was.

"Huh," Sam nodded.

"So, if that's all …?" Sara looked at him questioningly.

"Yes, uh, thank you very much for your help," Sam said, standing up with her and setting his glass down on the table.

He walked down the porch steps, looking over his shoulder as Sara went back inside the house. It was … thin, he thought. Mary's feelings had been strong, though. Strong enough for the ghost possessing her to use them against her husband of thirty-seven years?

The memory he wanted was tantalising, but distant, itching at him with its sense of familiarity. Possession, he thought, and anger. Those were the hooks that were snagging at him. But which case? Which job? When?

* * *

The small cabin was a self-accommodation unit, kitchen, living room and two beds. Dean wasn't sure how he'd let himself be talked into sharing it with Garth, but money still wasn't growing on trees. He would've given anything at that moment to have been somewhere else.

He looked back at the laptop, sitting on the table in front of him. More than a million hits on Sussex. Even narrowed down to the state and town. The movement of Garth's hand caught his eye and he lifted a hand to keep the beer bottle where it was as Garth's fingers closed around it.

"Easy there, flyweight," he said, looking up at Garth. "Last time you drank a beer, I had to pick you up off the floor." He moved the bottle closer to him and looked back down at the screen.

"Okay," Garth said, laughing a little. "Dean, this is none of my business, but ... you seem a little wound up lately? You and Sam?"

Dean kept his gaze on the screen. "No, you had it right. It's none of your business."

"Okay," Garth said, taking a breath. "It just seems that you guys are a little tense around each other."

Dean looked up. "We're fine. Can we get back to work?"

"Yeah." He shrugged.

"Okay," Dean said, lifting his beer and swallowing a mouthful as he looked back at the screen.

"All right. Just, uh – just letting you know that I'm here for you, if you want to talk. I know sometimes Bobby, he would –"

Dean's head lifted sharply. "Garth, stop, okay? You can take over the phones, you can hand out monster-killing advice but that's it, alright?" He stared at the other man, eyes darker than they had been. "I'm warning you," he added, very softly.

Garth looked down at the journal in front of him, ignoring the little insistent alarm at the back of his mind that suggested carrying on would be a bad idea.

"Bobby belonged to all of us, Dean – not just you and Sam. Now, I'm just taking what he did and trying to do something with it. That's all!" he said, voice rising as the injustice of Dean's remarks bit into him.

He looked up when the silence had stretched out a bit too long, swallowing slightly. Dean was staring at him and Garth suddenly realised what Bobby had meant when he'd told him to watch out for Dean's temper, back when he'd called about the Vegas job. It felt like the temperature in the room had dropped fifty degrees in the last second.

"Bobby teach you how to throw a baseball, Garth? He take you hunting and show you how to hit a deer at twenty yards in the forest?" Dean asked, the deep timbre of his voice making every word sound like an individual threat.

"He drop everything and come help when you called? He stab himself in the gut for you – or anyone else – to stop a demon from killing you? He fucking _die_ because he was on one of your goddamned crusades to save the goddamned world?" The words came out like bullets, clear and sharp, and his eyes filled with fury.

He leaned over the table, staring at the man, feeling everything inside, everything he'd buried and covered and hidden, coming up like a geyser and he dragged in a deep breath, trying to hold it all back.

"Don't tell me Bobby belonged to every-fucking-one, Garth. He raised me and Sam, when my Dad had better things to do. He was a-a father to us and no one has the claim on him that we do, no one else can _be_ him, you understand me?"

"I-I-I didn't –"

"You didn't mean it like that? No, it's funny no one ever fucking well means it like that when they finally go too far, do they?" He slammed his hand down on the table, making the bottle and the laptop and the books jump off the surface. God, he had to get out of here. He turned away, lifting his head and sucking down a lungful of air, fighting to get it through the bands that had closed around his chest.

"Dean, I'm sorry –"

"Why don't you see if you can find something in that bourbon-drenched book of his so we can get the hell out of Dixie, all right?" Dean managed to get out, more quietly, overriding the attempted apology, looking down at the floor to keep hold of the shreds of his control.

"Yeah. I'm on it."

Dean reached for the doorknob and walked out of the cabin.

* * *

_Goddamn it_, he thought, walking fast along the street, his hands jammed in his pockets and his head bowed. _Goddamn it all to Hell_. He'd thought he'd accepted it, thought he'd grieved, thought he'd let it go, but he hadn't and he needed something to ease the pain that was flowering inside of him, something to stop the walls from coming down. It wasn't just Bobby, he knew. Purgatory. Cas. Sam … it was all of it. Everything that had been put behind there, not looked at, not felt, not acknowledged. There was too much and he didn't know what else to do with it except bury it and pretend none of it existed. But it wasn't staying buried.

He saw the bar at the end of the street and lengthened his stride.

* * *

"Whiskey. Double. Neat."

The bartender looked at him and turned away, taking a bottle from the shelf behind him and pouring out the shots into a tumbler.

"Thanks," Dean muttered, tossing it down. It'd been more than a year, he thought as the fire filled his mouth and raced down his throat, warming him instantly. _Take it easy, or you'll be on your face_.

"Same again." He put the glass on the bar and watched the man refill it.

This time he swallowed a mouthful then stood up, walking to a small table in the far corner of the bar, and sitting down. He was aware of the bartender's gaze on him, he kept his own on the glass in front of him.

The first glassful was easing the tension in his chest. A couple more and he'd be able to keep the past down, where it belonged, without losing too much edge. It was to not blur that edge that he hadn't picked up anything stronger than beer since he'd gotten out. He'd known, even when he'd been down there, that this would happen, sooner or later.

There just wasn't another way of dealing with … he thought of Benny's words suddenly … _all the – everything_. Leaning back in the chair, he closed his eyes. All the everything was about right. He thought of the stone axe but the magic had gone from it. It was just a weapon now, sitting in the trunk of the car with the other weapons. The purity of hunting in black and white had long gone, bleached out and faded and ragged from the choices he'd had to make here, in the real world, where nothing, but nothing, was black and white.

He'd lost everyone but Sam … and Sam was as good as gone. He couldn't hunt with Benny, not up here.

_No one will look for you, Dean, they're all gone, and you're here_ … Alastair's words whispered through his mind and his eyes snapped open, fingers curling around the glass and lifting it to his mouth, his throat working as he swallowed half the contents in two gulps, feeling a light sheen of sweat beading along his forehead as he forced that memory, those memories, deeper.

No one had looked for him when he'd gone to Purgatory either. Cas had disappeared. For a time, he'd thought that the angel had been trying to repair what he'd done, to mend their broken friendship. He realised that for all Cas' talk about protecting him, the angel had still left. And he'd failed Cas, at the end.

No friends left, except the vampire who had his back.

No family left, except the brother who'd left him to rot.

He finished the whiskey and lifted the glass, waving it at the bartender.

* * *

Garth looked up as the door opened, his breath catching a little in his throat as he saw Dean come back in. He'd been gone for an hour.

"Needed some fresh air," Dean said by way of explanation as he sat down at the table, keeping his gaze firmly on the bright laptop screen.

"Yeah, no problem."

"You find anything?"

"Not yet," Garth looked at the pages in front of him. "Still looking."

"Right." Dean made his eyes focus on the words in front of him, scrolling down slowly.

He was aware of the other man's tension, but he wasn't prepared to say anything else. Wasn't able to say anything else. A name leapt out from the listings. He clicked on the link and was rewarded with a news article.

"Hey. 'Sussex' is not a who, it's a what. It's a business that went belly-up about a year ago. Look at this."

He turned the laptop around on the table top. "So, the guy that Scott brained? His old business partner – ran the company into the ground."

Garth enlarged the accompanying photo, looking at the two young man. "So, Scott had a beef with Jeff."

"Looks like," Dean said, picking up his phone as it rang.

"Hey, you're on speaker." He set the phone on the table.

"Sara Alcott's clean, if you look past the fact that she and Chester knocked boots on prom night back in the day," Sam said, his voice loud and clear from the phone.

"Okay, so..." Dean rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Mary has a grudge against Sara, and Scott has a grudge against Jeff. Besides the fact this is making my head hurt, how does this add up to a ghost?"

"Guys!" Garth said, staring down at the page. "Bobby has it right here. Green goo equals a spectre."

Dean looked at him. "Which equals ghost, right?"

"Mm, yeah, kind of," Garth said distractedly, reading down the page. "A spectre is a possessing avenger, from the Norse mythology, apparently. Or Germanic. Bobby's not real clear on that. The spectre is looking for revenge on its own betrayal, whatever that was. It possesses a human and forces them to get revenge for the betrayals they feel as well."

"Bobby say anything in there about how we hunt these things?" Sam asked.

"Uh …" Garth looked further down the page. "The last spectre he encountered rose shortly after someone desecrated a nearby grave." He looked at the laptop in front of him, switching to the Federal Criminal Database website and entering 'grave, vandalism, Kearney' into the search field.

"Which ... uh, there was a grave desecrated locally three days ago. It says here ... oh." He fell silent, reading. "This could get awkward."

Dean looked at him. "What?"

Garth shook his head. "Easier to show you, amigo."

Dean exhaled and looked his phone. "Sam? Meet us …" He looked at Garth questioningly.

"Town cemetery," Garth said, getting up and grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair.


	13. Chapter 13 Brother Against Brother

**Chapter 13 Brother Against Brother**

* * *

Dean looked at the tomb, set in the centre of the cemetery, a guard in full uniform standing next to the door. "The Unknown Soldier? You're kidding me, right?"

Garth looked at him. "Mary Lew steamrolled her husband the day after this place was vandalized. Do the math."

"But I thought the Unknown Soldier was buried in Arlington," Sam said, his brow furrowing as he tried to drag out the little he knew about it.

"Yep, but this is the _Confederate_ tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Or one of them, anyway."

"Okay, uh, what about the guard?" Sam glanced at Dean, then across to the tomb.

"Uh, he's ceremonial. Gone by dusk," Garth replied.

Dean's gaze travelled smoothly around the area, looking for anything that might need to be taken into account when they came here in darkness. It looked straightforward enough. "So, then we do this tonight?"

"Yeah," Garth nodded.

"Burn a Confederate soldier's bones in a Southern town?" Sam looked from Garth to Dean sourly. "Sure."

* * *

"That the guard's ride?" Dean watched the car head out of the cemetery.

"Yep," Garth said softly, turning on his flashlight as they stood up and headed for the tomb.

"Garth, turn off that light," Dean snapped, glancing at his brother. Sam rolled his eyes in sympathy.

"My night vision isn't so hot," Garth whispered, running into a headstone. Dean stopped.

"You think if someone sees a goddamned light waving around the cemetery days after the tomb was vandalised they're gonna understand what we're doing here? Use your head!" He growled, turning around as they came up to the door and Sam dropped to one knee to pick the lock on the door.

The lock clicked open and Sam pushed the door, stepping inside, waiting until Dean had closed the door behind them before he turned on his flashlight and looked around.

The room was small, perhaps eight feet by twelve, the large stone casket sitting in the centre. On the walls, murals of the fighting of the Civil War had been painted and sealed.

"Place doesn't look disturbed to me. What's the police report say?"

"Uh, they think it was just some kids messing around. They, uh – they found some beer cans, some graffiti," Garth said, his flashlight on again, and lighting up the stone casket. "Oh, and the casket was open when they got here, but they closed that back up."

"Yeah, but not before Casper had a chance to make a run for it," Dean ran his light over the coffin.

"So, what? If they never touched this, none of this would be happening?" Sam asked, the beam of his light playing over the floor.

"According to Bobby's account."

"All right, well, let's get this party started," Dean said, looking at the lid thoughtfully.

Sam's light picked up a shadow on the floor and he crouched down. A short length of waxed string lay there. He picked it up, looking at it curiously.

"Sammy, you want to give me a hand?"

Sam dropped the string and moved to the other side of the casket, standing beside Dean.

"And ... go," Dean said, the three men lifting and pushing the lid off the coffin and onto the floor.

Inside the coffin, the skeleton wore a dusty and ragged uniform, cavalry sword and pistol laid over the chest.

"Whoa. Check out this hardware. Do you guys know how much this is worth?" Garth looked down in amazement.

"Yeah, but why open it up if you're not gonna take anything?" Dean looked at the skeleton.

"I don't know," Sam said, picking up the small can of gasoline. "Maybe the cops showed up and they had to split fast."

"You sure this will work, even on a spectre?" Garth asked, holding a bag of salt.

"It's a ghost, isn't it?" Dean opened a matchbook, tearing off a match. "You burn its bones, the ghost disappears."

"All right," he said, lighting the match as Sam and Garth drew back a little. He dropped it onto the bones and fire flared inside the casket.

* * *

Deputy Wallace looked up as a folder slapped onto his desk, the Sheriff walking past.

"Write that up for me, would you, Doug?" he called back casually.

From the cells, Scott Lew called out and Wallace turned, getting out of his chair.

"Help!" Scott looked up the corridor, fingers clenched around the iron bars, his breath wheezing in his throat. "Please!"

"Hey. You okay?" Wallace looked at him.

"Need my... asthma... inhaler. Personal effects. Please."

Wallace nodded and walked quickly to the evidence room, sorting through the plastic bin that held Lew's effect. He found the envelope and tipped the contents into the palm of his hand, the inhaler, a set of car keys, a handful of change, a stick of gum.

His heart began to pound against his ribcage, and adrenalin flooded his body.

* * *

Dean looked down at the Sheriff's desk, his gaze moving steadily across it.

"Ten bones says Deputy Wallace had an axe to grind with his boss," he said quietly.

Garth looked at him. "How can you be so sure?"

Dean gestured to the tape dispenser sitting in the middle. Ectoplasm dripped from one end, forming a small puddle on the desk.

"Ah, what the hell?"

Dean looked around the room. "Maybe we torched the wrong soldier."

"Or maybe not," Sam said, looking at him. "Maybe an object was removed from the grave, something the spectre's attaching itself to."

"Um, I don't know, guys. You saw what I saw. Those kids didn't take anything." Garth looked from one to the other.

"Or they did," Sam insisted, looking back at his brother.

"And this spectre hitched a ride with it," Dean added, his thoughts following Sam's with familiar ease.

Sam nodded. "And whoever has the object gets possessed."

Garth looked at them. "Okay. So, who's got the object, and, more importantly, who do they have a grudge against?"

* * *

In the holding cell, Deputy Wallace sat on the bunk, staring into space.

Sam crouched in front of him. "All right. We need you to focus, Deputy. Other lives depend on it. Tell me what happened after you shot the sheriff."

"I was on the ground. I think Karl tackled me, and I asked him what happened."

"And?" Dean prompted.

"He didn't answer me. He just took my gun and walked away." The deputy stared a little past Sam, his face twitching occasionally with what he did remember. _Blood. A lot of blood_.

Sam glanced up at Dean.

"Did he say where he was going?" Dean pressed.

"I guess ... I must have hurt him, too," Deputy Wallace said slowly. "He said he was going to the hospital."

Dean turned abruptly and walked out of the cell, Garth and Sam following him.

"You two find out what you can about the Unknown Soldier." Dean looked at Sam. "I got the hospital," he added over his shoulder as he walked out through the office.

* * *

Sam eased himself out of the tight confines of the Pacer as Garth turned off the engine. The library was their last call; the historical society hadn't had any ideas.

Coming up beside Sam, Garth decided to try again. "Hey, uh, Sam. If you ever need to talk, I just want to let you know that I'm here. About anything – you know, life, uh, Dean, you."

Sam glanced at him, smiling uncomfortably. "I'm okay. Thanks."

"I mean, it just seems like you and Dean are talking but nobody's listening to each other. I had this cousin once – well, he's gone now – but his name was Frank. Frank and I used to build …," he kept talking as he walked up the steps and through the door.

Sam stopped on the bottom step, a vivid memory flashing in and out of his thoughts. _A small room, the walls mottled with mildew and peeling paint and water stains. Dean, lying on the floor, his face twisted up in pain._

But it was gone and he couldn't nail it to a time or a place. Not even a year.

The library door opened and Garth looked down at him. "Hey, you comin'?"

Sam looked up and nodded, walking up the steps and following him inside.

They stopped at the desk and Sam listened absently as Garth talked to the librarian on duty, a tall, slim woman with gleaming red hair. Ellen Harris was the nameplate on the desk, he saw distractedly. He'd almost had it. Garth tapped his arm and he looked up, following the woman through the stacks.

"You do know there is a good reason he's called the Unknown Soldier, right?" Ellen looked over her shoulder at him.

Sam nodded. "Right. Uh, we were just hoping maybe a theory or two had been a floated around over the years – something local, maybe?"

"There is one," she said slowly, stopping and pulling a book from the shelf in front of her.

* * *

The black car pulled up behind the Sheriff Department's vehicle and Dean got out, looking in the window as he walked past it. No standard issue pump action sitting in the rack beside the driver's seat. His mouth tightened and he lengthened his stride as he entered the building.

The sound of the shotgun was very loud in the quiet space, and the glass divider shattered, the receptionist diving for the floor behind the desk, the intern dropping into a crouch in front of the counter, their screams instant and involuntary.

Karl, the deputy who'd grabbed Wallace after he'd shot the sheriff and had found himself holding a small coin as well as Wallace's gun, racked the slide of the shotgun and raised the barrel, pointing it at the man in front of him.

"Hey, ump. You remember me? I stole second!"

"Karl?" He looked up, shock chilling him, making it hard to move, hard to think. "What the hell are you doing? Why are you doing –"

"Why am I gonna make mustard from your brain stem?!" Karl looked down at him. "I don't know. Why did you call me out … ump?"

David Kessler, intern and sometime local softball league umpire, stared down the big bore of the shotgun. He couldn't make his brain process what he was hearing. Out? He'd called him out? His thoughts jittered meaninglessly as his mouth opened. "I'm sorry."

Karl's face twisted up and he pulled the trigger, but there was only a click in the silence.

"Looks like you're shooting blanks," Dean said quietly, standing behind the deputy.

Karl swung around and Dean's hand flashed out to catch the barrel, yanking it free of the deputy's hands and tossing the gun clear, the momentum of the movement putting his weight behind the hit he slammed into the side of Karl's face.

Karl's head snapped to one side but he didn't move, and he turned back to Dean slowly. "Hey, that tickled."

The right came fast, hitting Dean just in front of the ear with the impact of a freight train. He was on the floor, head ringing insistently, trying to shake it off when he felt Karl's hands flip him over and wrench upwards, pulling his dead weight to his feet, the deputy's hands closing around his neck.

Well, Dean thought groggily, he was a bit outclassed in the weight division, might be time to put his mouth to work.

"Karl, listen," he said, forcing himself to keep his eyes locked onto the man's. Karl's face was just a few inches from his and he could feel the deputy's hot breath on his cheek, the closeness about as uncomfortable as he could imagine. "I know the spectre's turning the temperature up in there. So just tell me what the object is, and we'll send this joker home."

"I don't think so. There's unfinished business, thanks to you," Karl murmured, thrusting his face closer and inhaling deeply as he sniffed along the side of Dean's face. Dean turned his head as much as he could, the bizarre moment at least clearing his mind from the last of the effects of the blow. "Oh, the spectre likes you," Karl crooned, looking back at him.

Dean shifted his gaze back to the deputy's. "Oh, yeah? Why don't you tell him to come on out here and we'll make promise bracelets."

He felt the energy sucked out from the air around him as the man lifted him off the floor, throwing him across the desk that sat behind them, tucking his head down as he hit the filing cabinets with his shoulders and fell to the floor.

* * *

"Here," Ellen said, as she stopped on a page, tapping a photograph. "Corporal Collins of the Union shot and killed his brother, Vance, who fought for the Confederacy. Local boys."

Sam looked down at photograph. The man's face was similar to the decaying corpse image they'd seen in the video. "I'd say that qualifies as betrayal."

Ellen nodded. "Legend has it that Vance swore vengeance on his brother with his dying breath. Years later – consumed by guilt, no doubt – the corporal dug his brother up where he'd buried him on the battlefield and brought him home."

"Are you suggesting this Vance guy is the Unknown Soldier?" Garth peered over her shoulder at the photograph.

She turned to him and lifted one shoulder. "That's one theory, anyway."

Sam leaned a little closer, tapping the page. "What's that?"

Looking down, she nodded in recognition. "Most of the soldiers were poor farmers, so the families would give them a penny on a string." Turning over a couple of pages, she stopped on a close up photograph of an 1859 penny, a hole drilled through the edge. "It was for good luck, and in case they ever got lost, they always had a penny for food."

Sam stared down at the photograph, thinking of the string he'd seen in the tomb.

"A penny."

* * *

Dean rolled over as Karl came around the desk. Cracked rib, somewhere, he thought, looking up at the rabid expression on the deputy above him. He was thinking about weight and balance and how the fuck to get the advantage over the man when Karl dropped to one knee beside him and grabbed his hand.

"Here," Karl said gently, pressing something against his palm. "Have a taste."

Dean's eyes widened, his heart beat accelerating and every ache and pain from the last two encounters with Karl disappearing. He had something to do. It was important. He couldn't do it here.

* * *

Sam pushed the door open to get out of the library, phone pressed against his ear.

_"It's me. Do what you gotta."_ Dean's voicemail message instructed.

"Dean, hey. There was a string on the floor of the tomb. It used to hold an old penny. That's the object. We're coming right now," Sam said, hurrying down the steps.

* * *

Dean sat on the bed in the room, staring at the opposite wall. In the silence, he heard the empty click, a hammer falling onto an empty chamber, over and over again, behind the silver barrel, his brother's face, screwed up in rage.

He heard his voice, low and raw, _you don't need me, you and Ruby go fight demons_. Sam had lied to him. Again. Fighting demons, trying to save Jimmy, turning around and seeing his brother, kneeling over a demon, his mouth fastened onto her neck, and when Sam had looked up, his lips and chin had been dripping with the demon's blood.

Standing in a crappy hotel room, staring at Sam, willing him to understand, begging him to understand. _"As long as it's you and me. Demon bitch is a dealbreaker. You kiss her goodbye, we can go right now."_ And Sam turning away. _"I can't."_

The furious snarl of the goddess. _"You're lying to me!"_ And Sam staring up at him, face swelling and broken. _"Okay, okay. You want the truth? Here it is. Here it is. God's honest. She was right. There's something wrong with me, really wrong. I've known it for a while. I lied to you."_

Rhode Island. Samuel. Betrayal after betrayal. Lie after lie. _I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry._

"_All you've ever done is run away."_

_"And I was wrong. Every single time I did."_

_A year spent in a place that he couldn't feel with a family not his own, pain eating him every single day because no one had told him, no one had come to tell him that he didn't have to grieve, didn't have to feel the guilt, or the shame or the agony._

_Sam. Whitefish. The expression on his brother's face when he'd asked. Guilt. Regret. Defiance._

His head was pounding, hurting, aching. His mouth was filled with a bitter, acid taste, the gall of betrayal, like biting on iron. His chest was tight and it was a struggle to get enough breath, throat closing up, memory and thought and feeling beating, bludgeoning the walls that were getting thinner and thinner.

He heard the footsteps outside the door distantly and he looked down at the gun in his hand, feeling its cold, smooth surface, the weight with the full clip loaded. He'd thought that there wasn't any escape from the past, from everything that had happened. But there was. A final, clean escape that would bring the scales back to centre, balanced again. Would get rid of all the pain.

* * *

Sam opened the door and came through, his phone pressed against his ear, hearing the ringing in the room. Dean was sitting on the edge of the bed, his phone ringing next to him. Sam cut the call and stared at him.

"Dean? What the hell, man?" He saw Dean's head turn slowly toward him. "We went to the hospital. Dean?"

He stopped as his brother got up, racking the slide of the automatic, the gun rising to point at him.

"You should've looked for me when I was in Purgatory."

Sam looked at Dean, an icy sweat forming on his back as the thoughts of all that had ever happened between them flashed through his mind. _Keep it calm_, he told himself. _Keep it rational._

"Come on, Dean. I know it's not you in there pulling the strings," he said quietly.

"Shut up!" Dean snapped, and the barrel twitched to one side as Garth lifted his hand slightly. "Don't!"

He looked back at Sam. "You never even wanted this life. Always blamed me for pulling you back into it."

Sam shook his head. "That's not true."

"Really?" Dean asked, ignoring the fine tremble in his hands as he kept the gun aimed at Sam's head. "'Cause everything you've ever done since you climbed into my ride has been to deceive me."

"What do you want me to say? That I've made mistakes? I've made mistakes, Dean," Sam said, feeling the memories rising inside of him. He'd tried to put them behind, tried to let them be in the past. He'd thought he'd paid for them, paid his dues, paid in full, but he hadn't. Just had … swept them away. Sort of. In a way.

"That's not Dean, Sam," Garth said.

"_SHUT UP!_" Dean roared at him, staring at Sam.

"Mistakes?" he asked his brother, his tone conversational now, taking a slow step toward him. "Well, let's go through some of Sammy's greatest hits. Drinking demon blood, check. Trusting Ruby instead of me, check. Not telling me that you lost your soul. Or how about running around with Samuel for a whole year, letting me think that you were dead while you're doing all kinds of crazy. Those aren't mistakes, Sam. Those are _CHOICES_!

"All right," Sam agreed readily, fighting down the impulse to shout back at him, to throw his mistakes – his _choices_ – back at him. "You said it. We've both played a little fast and loose."

"Yeah, I might have lied," Dean said, taking another step closer. "But I never _once_ betrayed you. I never once left you to _die_." He stepped closer, feeling a frisson of triumph through his nerves as he saw his brother flinch at that accusation. "And for what … a girl? You left me to die for a _girl_?"

"I did look for you, Dean! I spent months looking for you and trying to find a way into that place and I couldn't find anything – alright? I _failed_ you! _Again_! I didn't look for the girl but if I hadn't found – I was running – goddamnit you never listen to me, you think you know me, know all about me but you never listen!" Sam shouted back at him, stepping in, hand flashing up and clamping around Dean's wrist, sweeping the gun aside, his fist closed and tight, with his weight behind it, slamming against his brother's jaw.

He swung Dean around into the glass wall divider, fingers driving into the tendons of the wrist, trying to force him into dropping the gun. The ghost's tenacity and strength was greater than human and Dean turned toward him. He drove his fist into Dean's cheek, then jaw, giving him a few second's more time but he still couldn't force the hand to open. And Dean struck back, his loosely curled backhand blow hitting Sam under the jaw, lifting him up and back, blinding pain as his brother's skull cracked down onto his own and he felt his grip torn free as Dean's foot slammed into his solar plexus, sending him flying back across the room, the low table smashing under him as he came up against the edge of the couch.

Dean looked down at the gun as Sam scrambled around to face him, and Garth stepped in between them.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!"

Sam pushed himself up. "Garth, don't."

"No, he won't kill me," Garth looked at Dean's face, empty hands held up between them. "His beef isn't with me. You're not gonna shoot me, are you, Dean?"

The gun lifted smooth and fast to point at his head. "Don't be so sure. Move."

"Come on, Dean," Garth said, his voice a little unsteady as he forced himself to keep his eyes on Dean's, not look down at the little black hole at the end of the barrel. "You do not want to kill your brother. You – you've been protecting him your whole life. Don't stop now."

"He left me to rot in Purgatory!" Dean yelled at him, his eyes cutting past Garth to where Sam was sitting on the floor.

"I couldn't get you out!" Sam yelled back at him, head tipped back as he tasted his blood in his mouth.

"All right. All right. Maybe he did. I don't know. I wasn't there. But I'm sure he had his reasons."

"Just like you had your reasons for protecting a vampire, Dean!" Sam snapped.

Garth turned around to look at Sam. "What?"

"Benny's been more of a brother to me this past year than you've ever been!" Dean retorted, his voice deepening. "That's right. Cas let me down. You let me down. The only one that hasn't let me down is Benny."

Garth pulled his attention back to the man in front of him. "I know you're angry. But, man, you got to fight this thing," he said, looking at him. "Do not do this! Just let it go."

Dean's gaze shifted from Garth to Sam, his eyes narrowed.

"Come on, Dean," Garth said softly.

"Goodbye Sam," Dean said, and strode toward him, shouldering Garth out of the way. Garth's fist hit the side of Dean's jaw as he moved past, and Dean staggered to the side, his fingers opening as his hand reached out automatically to steady himself, the gun held with two fingers and the penny, pressed behind it, falling to the floor.

"Ow!" Garth doubled over his hand, shaking it, the knuckles throbbing from their bone-on-bone contact with Dean's face. "God!"

Dean looked around, shaking his head, his eyes widening as he took in Sam's hunched figure by the couch.

Looking down, Garth saw the penny lying on the floor and stooped to pick it up quickly.

"Garth, don't!" Sam shouted, too late.

"It's cool," Garth said, holding the penny up. "It's all good. I'm cool."

He looked down at the penny. It couldn't hurt him. He didn't hold on.

* * *

Garth walked down the path, carrying his bag toward the Pacer. Walking beside him, Dean's shoulders were hunched, his hands in his pocket. He stopped when he saw the car, and Garth turned around, stopping as well.

"Garth, what did I say?" Dean asked, unsteadily. "To Sam."

"C'mon, Dean, don't rehash old shit, that's what gets you into trouble in the first place," Garth said, shaking his head slightly.

"I'm trying not to. I just need to know." He looked at him, and Garth sighed, recognising the entreaty in the other man's face.

"Uh … you told Sam that he should have gone looking for you, when you were in Purgatory, and um … that he left you to die for a girl … there was something about demon blood and someone called Ruby," Garth's face screwed up as he tried to remember the accusations that had flown between the brothers in the heat of the possession.

"And uh, running around without a soul and a guy called Samuel. You told him that those weren't mistakes, they were choices. And then you pointed your gun at him." He thought for a moment. "Oh, yeah, and you told him that someone called Benny had been more of a brother to you than Sam ever had."

Dean looked at the ground. "Right."

"This thing – it looked for the places where you felt betrayed. And that's what came out," Garth said quietly.

"Yeah."

"Listen to me. Sam said he looked for you, but he couldn't find anything. He was – Dean, I think he gave up because he felt he'd failed you. You two, you need to talk about this."

Dean lifted his head, mouth stretching out a little in a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah."

Garth looked at him a little sadly. He would think about it, he guessed. Maybe they could it straight between them, but he'd gotten to know a lot more about both of the Winchesters in the last few days, and he wasn't going to bet his next paycheck that they'd be able to get through this. In any case, he couldn't do any more. It was up to them.

"It took me forever to melt that penny, but it's finally gone," he said, turning back to the car.

"How come that penny didn't jack you like everyone else?" Dean asked curiously, shunting the previous conversation aside. "I mean, I can understand why it didn't affect the kid who took it. He's young and innocent. But, uh, everyone at some point in their life feels like they've been screwed somehow."

Garth smiled. "Not me, man. I let all that stuff go," he said, slinging his gear into the back of the small pickup and turning back. "And you should, too. You can't change the past, amigo."

He took a step toward Dean. "Now, there's something I want to say to you. With Bobby dead, you and Sam are all each other has. And that's not so bad, man."

A phone rang inside his jacket. "Oh, got to go."

He turned back to the truck, opening the door. "Yo, Lamar. What do we got? Wendigo?"

Dean watched him get into the cab. "You got a flare gun? No? What about a flame thrower? Yeah, well you need fire so start figuring it out." He laughed. "Or get some sneakers, buddy, 'cause you're gonna have to run. All right."

Garth closed the phone, tucking it back into his jacket, and looked along the seat.

"Dean!" He picked up the cap and got out again. "Listen, I … uh, Bobby and me, hunted a rugaru, a while back now. He left this." He handed the cap to Dean, watching as Dean turned it over in his hands, gently, carefully.

"I'm sorry," Garth said, looking at him. "Bobby kind of talked about you guys like you were family, but I didn't know – he didn't give much detail, you know?"

Dean looked at him, hands closing a little more tightly around the cap. "Yeah, I know."

"I wasn't trying to be him," Garth said. "I mean, I like who I am."

Dean smiled, mouth curving up to one side. "Sure."

"But I was serious about talking. If you ever want. Or need to," he added. "And dead serious about you talking to Sam."

Dean pulled in a deep breath, tipping his head back. "Yeah."

He looked back at Garth. "You're all right, you know that?"

Garth grinned at him over his shoulder as he got back into the car. "'Course I know that."

* * *

Sam leaned over the sink, running the water over his hands and wiping them over his face, through his hair. He didn't need a penny, he thought, looking at himself for a moment. He had all the rage he'd ever need, right here.

A soft knock on the door pulled his attention back and he looked around. Eggshells. They were back on eggshells, recognising the tacit request in the softness of the knocking.

He turned back and looked at himself. Nothing that Dean'd said had been untrue. He could admit to that. But his brother had been overlooking the crap he'd been throwing around freely as well. He couldn't walk on eggshells. He couldn't pretend that everything was alright and that they could go back to being what they'd been … whenever the last time that'd been. Their past was littered with secrets and lies.

He looked at the phone, lying on the side of the sink beside his hand. Dean might think that the vampire was a friend. But he'd trusted Cas as well. And look at how that'd turned out. He picked up the phone, scrolling down the list of names. There was a way to be sure, he thought, listening to the phone ring on the other end. A way to make sure.

"Martin? Hey, it's Sam Winchester."

* * *

Sam put the bag into the trunk and slammed the lid shut. He pulled in a deep breath and looked at Dean who stood beside the driver's door.

"For the record, the girl – her name's Amelia," he said. He didn't want to get into the car until some of this was straight. "Amelia Richardson. She and I had a place together in Kermit, Texas."

"Look, man –"

"What, Dean? You gonna tell me you didn't mean what you said?" Sam said angrily. "You and I both know you didn't need that penny to say those things."

Dean looked away. "Come on, Sam."

"Own up to your crap, Dean!" Sam snapped at him. "I told you from the jump where I was coming from. But you? You had secrets. You had Benny. And you got on your high and mighty, and you've been kicking me ever since you got back. But that's over." He looked at his brother, his face hard. "So move on, or I will."

Dean saw the trigger-readiness in Sam. Saw how close he was to walking off. He didn't want to leave it like this. Garth wasn't much of a hunter, but he'd been right about this, they had to talk.

"Okay. I hear you."

"Good," Sam said sharply, feeling his anger dip a little with the ready acceptance. He walked around the trunk to the passenger door, and looked over the roof at Dean. "You know what? Hear this, too. I just might be that hunter that runs into Benny one day and ices him."

"I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, won't we?" Dean said tiredly.

"Yeah." Sam said. "Yeah. You keep saying that."

* * *

_**I-29 N, Iowa**_

The road was good, empty, clear. _Unlike his head_, Dean thought sourly.

_It's not the betrayals_, he'd realised, _it's the caring_. Caring about the people who'd made those choices, those errors in judgement. Caring that they hadn't cared about him. Caring about hope and a way through.

_I want you to take away the hope because that's the thing that's killing me_. Leary's scratchy voice in his head. He ducked his head, smiling slightly at the aptness of it.

It was killing him.

* * *

Sam leaned against the cool glass of the window, his eyes closed, hearing the thrum of the tyres, the soft grumble of the engine, the occasional slur of fabric as his brother changed position in the seat beside him.

The memory had come back. Whole. Intact. The grey walls of the abandoned mental hospital. The ghosts that had filled the place. The two teenagers who'd been trapped in there with them. The hands gripping either side of his skull, a tearing, blinding pain that had released a rage that had been too big for him to contain, to face.

_I am normal. I'm just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here! Cause you're following dad's orders like a good little soldier? Because you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval?_

_This isn't you talking Sam, Dean had said, lying on his back, his shirt tattered from the rock salt, blood seeping through._

_That's the difference between you and me. I have a mind, of my own. I'm not pathetic, like you, he'd said, filled with anger, filled with hate, filled with the desire to kill._

_You hate me that much. You think you could kill your own brother? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger. Do it!_

_And he had. Three times._

He shuddered at the memory of those clicks, unbelievably loud in the silence of the room. At the expression in his brother's eyes before Dean had knocked him down and then out cold and had finished the job by himself.

* * *

_**I-90 W, South Dakota**_

_It's all black and white. There's no maybe. You find the bad thing, kill it. See, most people spend their lives in shades of gray. Is this right? Is that wrong? Not us. _

Dean rubbed a hand over his face, the sun rising behind him, the car's shadow thrown out long in front of him. _Gordon's voice_, he thought. From a long, long time ago. He'd believed that. He'd wanted that. Simple decisions. Find the bad thing, kill it. _Yeah, right._

He hadn't listened then. Why did he want it so much now? Because he was tired? Because he wanted life to be simple, not requiring so much thought, so much effort from him? Was it right or wrong that he cared as much for Benny as he did for Sam? Or did he? He'd told Sam that if Benny slipped off the reservation, he wouldn't stop another hunter from killing him. Hell, he'd told Benny that he'd kill him if he didn't keep his nose clean, down there. Would he?

He flicked a glance at his brother, hunched as usual into the corner of the seat, legs drawn up a little in the well.

_You've protected him your entire life. Is that what you wanted? To be guardian to him? To have no life of your own? _He wasn't sure. It wasn't that simple, he thought.

_I told you not to let him out of your sight! I want you to watch out for Sammy. Protect your brother. Don't let anything hurt him, Dean. Watch out for Sammy. You could've got him killed! Watch out for Sam. Protect Sam. Look after Sam. Your brother, Sammy._

_Dean, if he changes, you have to kill him. There's no one else._

That was the real difference between Benny and Sam, he thought. Benny didn't come with a lifetime of responsibility, a lifetime of memory and pain and never being sure if he was doing the right thing, for both of them, for Sam. Benny had just followed where he'd led, had just put himself between danger and him, had just had his back.

And Sam. Sam wanted a different life. Had come full circle. Sam wanted a normal life again.

He'd wondered, in Cicero, if Sam hadn't been … where he'd been, if he'd been able to see his friends, keep in touch, if that life wouldn't have felt less like a dream and more like a life. He'd never know, not for sure. There'd been good bits, he guessed. Things he remembered where he'd almost fit in. But for the most part, he'd been barely there, present but not alive. The civilian life hadn't let him be him at all. Maybe it was different for his brother.

* * *

Sam stared through half-closed lids at the road ribboning out ahead of them, the traffic to either side, the mid-morning sun blazing out of a blue sky on the wide, flat fields and woods and houses that flashed by, a panorama of normal life that they were so far removed from it seemed more like watching a movie than real life.

He didn't know why he hadn't told Dean about trying to find him. About cleaning up the leviathans and losing Kevin and trying to find any way to get into Purgatory, or open a door to get Dean out. He thought … he'd thought it was because he hadn't wanted his brother to know that he'd failed. Dean had a found a way to save him time and again. The two times that he hadn't, both had been his decisions. To trust Ruby over his brother. And to atone for that mistake by taking Lucifer down into the Cage. Even then, his brother had been with him, right until the very end.

_He won't talk about Purgatory_. The thought slid through, soft and sly, with sharp little teeth. And it's more than the combat fatigue that keeps him on edge and twitching twenty-four seven.

_Maybe._

He remembered a farmhouse, sitting bound to a chair and talking to a vampire who'd claimed that she and her nest were not killing. Just the one talk. And he'd gone back to convince his brother to let them go.

_Our job is hunting evil. And if these things aren't killing people, they're not evil!_

That'd been him, saying that to Dean. And Dean had listened. Eventually.

His brother had known the vampire for a year, had fought and bled with him. Why didn't he give Dean's vampire friend the same benefit of the doubt he'd asked for Lenore?

* * *

_**I-90 W, Montana**_

_I'm not your brother. Like, I don't even really care about you. Maybe I should feel guilty. But I don't._

Sam winced at the memory of those words, his fingers tightening around the wheel until the bones showed white through the skin.

_Dean, we knew this was coming. When you put my soul back ... Cas warned you about all the crap. This is what happens when you throw a soul into Lucifer's dog bowl. And you think there's just gonna be some cure out there?_

That memory brought a flinch. He'd been exhausted and ground down from the hallucinations and the sleeplessness and the futility of it all but his brother hadn't deserved that. Hadn't deserved to have that guilt thrown on him as well. It hadn't been Dean's fault.

It'd been Dean who'd made a deal with Death to get his soul back, when he hadn't even wanted it back. What would his life be like if he hadn't done that? Hadn't kept trying, kept going in spite of everyone telling him he shouldn't. Not a chance of a normal life, he realised. He'd been a stone-cold killer, efficient, emotionless, effective. And he would still be that today, if … he glanced at the still figure sleeping beside him.

* * *

The car climbed up through the mountains, no other traffic now, just the headlights revealing the black asphalt, the white lines, the flicker and shadows of the forest that lined both sides of the road.

Dean felt around for the cup of coffee, now tepid, that he'd picked up when he'd filled the tank, finding the Styrofoam cup and swallowing half of it. The drive had been going on for days, but it had felt as if they'd been driving for weeks, silence filling the car, thick as fog and cold. Insulating them from everything else. From each other.

Purgatory had been hard and brutal and he'd done things that had scared the hell out of him. It'd been simple and pure as well. It wasn't life. It hadn't been real the way this life was real. He didn't know if that was important or not. He had a feeling that it wasn't. It had given him a sense of purpose again, in one way. It had made him realise that what he did, what he was … that was something he couldn't change. And didn't want to change.

_You can take your peace... and shove it up your lily-white ass. 'Cause I'll take the pain and the guilt. I'll even take Sam as is. It's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise. This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it._

He exhaled deeply. In spite of all that had been done to him, all that he'd done in Hell, in spite of a year's combat in a land of monsters, in spite of the despair he'd felt at losing everyone, the failures, the shame, the guilt … he still believed that. Still thought that fighting for right, and defeating evil was an important thing to do with his life.

Sam hadn't left, but he would. He didn't know what to think about that, hadn't let himself think about it. He might see their current quest through. But after, he would leave. For the normal life he wanted.

And he'd be alone.

* * *

_**Whitefish, Montana**_

Dean pulled into the yard, parking the car and turning off the engine, listening to the tick of the hot metal in the deep silence that surrounded them. Beside him, Sam stretched as much as he could in the confined space and looked around.

"We there?"

"Yep," Dean pulled the keys out and got out, going to the trunk to get their gear. Behind him, he heard the squeak of the passenger door opening and the clunk of it closing.

"Dean."

He put the bags on the ground beside him, lowering the trunk lid to look at his brother.

"Yeah?"

"Are you, uh, hungry?" Sam looked at the cabin door. "I could make something."

Dean looked at him. It hadn't been what Sam had been about to say, he thought, but the brassy note of anger had gone from his voice. He closed the lid of the trunk and pulled out the keys.

"Yeah, I could eat," he said, bending to pick up the bags. "What are we talking about?"

"Uh … burgers, I guess," Sam said. He'd picked up the ground beef in the store in Bozeman on impulse, along with the supplies for the cabin. The fridge wasn't bad, but it didn't have a freezer so everything had to be eaten fast or in cans.

"Sounds good," Dean said, walking to the porch and unlocking the cabin door. He hit the lights and looked around. Dustier, than when they'd been here last, but otherwise not changed. It was a slight risk, staying here. Crowley knew it. He could always send in the demons if he wanted them. But they'd laid down protection over it and it was the only place left that had the slightest connection with their past.

Dumping the gear bag on the table, he dropped the other bag next to the couch. There was a bedroom upstairs, but neither had used it. He slept on the couch. Sam used the single bed in the room off the living room.

"You, uh, need a hand with anything?" he asked, turned around as Sam put the groceries he'd picked up on the counter. His brother shook his head and he turned back to the gear bag, pulling out their guns, and the brushes and files, the gun oil and solvent, and grabbing a sheet of newspaper from the cupboard next to the door.

* * *

The fire burned in the stove, heating the rooms and adding a warmer light to the room. The burgers had been good, Dean thought with an oblique look at his brother. Sam sat at the cleaned-off table, the laptop open and lighting his face in shades of white and blue.

"I thought the same way you do, about Benny, when I met him," Dean said suddenly. Sam looked up in surprise.

"He said he knew about a doorway, out of there, for a human."

"What was in it for him?" Sam asked, carefully.

Dean's mouth twisted up. "I had to take his soul out, put it back in his remains."

Sam looked at him, thinking about it. Dean would've had any number of opportunities to welsh on whatever deal he'd made. And there was only one reason he wouldn't've. The vampire had somehow earned his brother's trust. Earned his loyalty. That wasn't an easy thing to do, he knew. Especially now.

"He saved my life, more times than I can remember," Dean said softly, looking at the bottle held lightly in his hands. "Put himself at risk to save me," he added, looking up at Sam.

"I told him, when we got out, that we'd go our separate ways. But I owe him, for what he did. I'd still be there if it wasn't for him."

Sam nodded, understanding. It was one thing he knew about Dean, one thing that had never changed, under any circumstances. Debts were paid. And trust was holy. It took a long time to get Dean's trust, but once you had it, it was yours. He would trust you with anything – until you proved him wrong. He hoped the vampire wouldn't.

"I tried to make a deal at the crossroads," he said, looking at Dean. "To get you out."

He saw his brother's brows drawing together and a half-smile lift one side of his face. "Crowley showed up. Told me there were no deals to be made."

He looked back at the laptop screen. "That was when I started running, I think. And I only stopped when I got to know her. Because I felt … there again. Not a ghost." He looked back at Dean. "You know, everything got so … crap … the last couple of years. I couldn't – it didn't feel – without you there …"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I know."

He got up and took the empty bottle to the trash, turning to the fridge and getting out two more. He put one down on the table next to Sam, carrying the other back to the couch.

"Thanks," Sam said, twisting off the top, tipping the bottle against his lips and letting the cold liquid fill his mouth. "You think we can find Kevin?"

Dean looked at the bottle in his hands for a moment, twisting off the top and swallowing a mouthful. "Yeah, it might take awhile."

Sam nodded. "Well, something'll come up."

"Always does."

* * *

The fire was burning low. The rest of the cabin in darkness. Dean rolled over onto his side, watching the small flames. It wasn't … fixed … or healed. Or whatever you wanted to call it. It was just … acknowledged … maybe.

He closed his eyes, seeing the light dancing behind the blackness.


	14. Chapter 14 Angelus Reditus

**Chapter 14 Angelus Reditus**

* * *

_**Highway 93, Montana**_

The highway was empty, and the Impala sped along between the towering walls of forest to either side with a soft rumble, music filling the interior as Dean drove back to the cabin. Empty road, richly tantalising scent of hot food, good tunes filling his ears_ … what more could a man want?_ The thought brought a slight curve to his lips.

They'd been holed up in the cabin for a week, looking for Kevin, looking for anything, really, to kickstart them on their way again. The days had been drifting by, nothing to show for them, but a familiar easing of the tensions that had been between them, that weird yet comforting unspoken acknowledgement that had characterised their past when it had been just the three of them, and no one had ever apologised or admitted to anything, but all had extended their olive branches little by little until they could be in the same room again, talk again, and eventually, laugh together again.

He glanced down at the packet on the seat beside him, reaching over and grabbing it. Opening the bag awkwardly against the wheel, he pulled out a handful of chips. Junk food wasn't ever going to taste quite as good as his memories of it, he thought. And reacquiring the habit hadn't been as easy as he'd thought it would be, the almost obscene variety of choice still frying his brain if he looked at it too long.

His attention sharpened as he saw the man walking on the verge, a hundred yards ahead, a tattered beige trenchcoat flapping around his legs as he approached a full-sized wood carving of a bear holding a carved and painted sign. The car caught up and passed and Dean turned his head to look at him as he went by, every other thought wiped out by the sight of the man's face, the scrubby beard barely covering familiar features, the filthy clothes under the coat bringing a whirlwind of memories.

_Cas._

His foot hit the brake automatically and the car stopped on the empty road. Adjusting the rearview mirror, he shifted into reverse and went back, stopping and staring around as he reached the spot he thought he'd seen the man. On the side of the road, the roughly-carved upright bear held up a sign for a local resort, but there was no one there.

_I know what I saw_, he thought as he put the car in Park. He got out, staring at the bear and the sign. _The man had been walking toward it. Wearing a filthy trenchcoat. He'd been there, right there_. He looked up and down the road and into the trees, feeling his pulse pounding uncomfortably at the base of his throat. It was him. He'd seen the angel. He _had_.

The engine's deep idle and the stereo still playing quietly in the car were the only sounds he could hear. _All right_, he thought uneasily. _Either you saw him and he angel-vaporated. Or you … thought you saw him but he wasn't there at all_. He touched the car lightly, fingertips registering the smooth metal door handle. Neither option was exactly reassuring.

He opened the door and slid in behind the wheel, still looking around as he put the car into gear and started to move slowly down the road again. He'd done his best – he thought he'd done his best to get the angel out. Maybe … maybe he hadn't tried hard enough. Maybe this was some kind of weird guilt trip. There'd been no way down there to save Cas. There hadn't. He had nothing to feel guilty about. He'd tried.

But he'd left him behind. The bottom line, where the buck stopped, where there were no more excuses … he'd left Cas behind and gotten out.

* * *

_**Whitefish, Montana**_

Dean stopped the car in front of the porch and turned off the engine. The cabin sat at the end of its own road, a little under a mile from the highway, surrounded by the forest and to the north, the rising mountain ranges. Other than the occasional big rig, even the light highway traffic wasn't really audible. Silence surrounded him like a blanket, his thoughts a loud mess in his head.

He still wasn't sure if he wanted to believe that he'd seen … what he'd seen. The alternative was worse, but at the same time, a lot less confusing. It couldn't have been the angel … had to have been a memory … a-a-a leftover … something his mind had thrown up because he hadn't let go, hadn't been dealing. Something like that. There was just no way it could've been Cas. Dean rubbed a hand slowly along the side of his face. The angel's face, that fixed stare as he'd walked, was vividly clear in his mind's eye. But there'd been no one there. He opened the door and got out, reaching back into the car for the six-pack of beers and sack of food.

Sam was sitting at the table, reading through something on the computer as he walked into the cabin and closed the door behind him.

"Hey," Sam said, glancing over his shoulder at his brother.

"Hey," Dean's response was automatic. He took a couple of steps into the room and stopped, the memory of the angel's face returning. _It wasn't possible. Was it?_

Sam turned back to him, taking in the pensive expression on Dean's face as he stood staring straight ahead.

"You look like you've s– well, I was gonna say, 'You look like you've seen a ghost,' but you'd probably be thrilled," he said dryly. The words filtered through and Dean blinked, turning to look at him. Sam's brow creased up.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm cool," Dean said slowly as he walked to the kitchen and put the beer and bag on the counter. _It could not have been Cas. It was that simple. It couldn't have been him. He was dead_.

"What's up?"

Sam looked back at the laptop. It was a tacit but ironclad rule that they both knew down to the marrow of their bones. Dean could've walked in spouting blood with an axe buried in his skull, but if he said he was fine and changed the subject then the axe was off the conversational agenda. Whatever had happened was, Sam thought, still being processed. Until his brother had figured it out one way or another, he'd never hear about it.

He focussed on the news reports on the screen. "Well, this kid went missing from a preschool."

"That sucks. And?" Dean pulled off his jacket, tossing it onto a chair as he turned around to look at Sam. A job would be good. A job would drown out the questions and the lack of answers and let him forget it. Let him bury it. Try to bury it. Try to ignore it.

"And at the same time he vanished, a surprise tornado hit, lasted maybe twenty seconds," Sam said, looking at the report. "Then, uh ... shazam! Back to perfect weather."

"Hmm." Dean walked back to the kitchen, and pulled the bottles out of the carrier.

"Yeah."

The beer went into the fridge, along with the random groceries, as he tried to focus on what his brother was saying. The image of the angel's face, as he'd walked along the side of the road, kept coming back. The way he'd stared ahead, not acknowledging the car, or … not seeing it …

"Well, similar wackiness has happened over the past few weeks in other places – uh, Tulsa, a bus driver vanishes and a river gets overrun with frogs. New Mexico – a mailman disappears, the earth splits open."

Dean tossed the cardboard carrier into the trash can and walked to the table, looking down at the screen, hunching up slightly as he forced the recurring image away, forced himself to concentrate on the articles that filled it.

"All right. So, uh, you thinking demons?"

"Yeah, possibly, but ... I mean, this stuff was major," Sam said, his face screwing up as he clicked through the reports. "These folks have nothing in common – no religious affiliations, different hometowns, all ages. Why would demons want them?"

"Why do demons want anything?" Dean asked absently, reading the missing child report, the vision of the angel dissolving as his concentration sharpened. He turned away, slapping Sam's shoulder lightly as he went back to the paper sack holding their lunch. "So, we on this?"

Sam looked at the screen, brow still creased. He wasn't even sure what he was looking at, but getting out of the cabin couldn't hurt. The anger – the _rage_ – that had filled him in Missouri had gone. He wasn't exactly sure why. Or where it had come from. Or if it would come back. He wasn't – he couldn't – really – look at it too closely. It had felt entirely too close to the old anger.

He'd spent the last week trying to work out what it was that had been driving him, driving the escalating feeling of fury since he'd met the vampire and reluctantly acceded to his brother's unspoken request to let him go. Some of it rose from his shame, he knew. A mixed venomous poison of knowing that he should have looked for Kevin harder. Should've kept himself in the loop. Had run when he should've stayed. That was being fuelled by his brother's refusal to let him forget that. Some of it was the disappointment he could feel in Dean. Disappointment in him. Disappointment in what he'd done, what he'd chosen to do.

Some of it was the realisation that he might never get what he wanted. And there was nothing he could do about that. And some of it was coming from a very slowly growing fear that what he'd thought was gone, burned out of his veins and his heart and his soul by what he'd been through, what he'd suffered, hadn't really gone at all. Had been lying dormant, waiting for the right combination of emotion to feed it and bring it back to life.

He pushed the thoughts away, staring at the screen for a moment longer then closing it with a sharp snap.

"Yep."

He turned around in the chair, hand closing around the take-out container Dean passed him.

"Where do you want to start?"

Dean sat down in the chair opposite. "With the kid."

* * *

_**Atlantic, Iowa**_

Crowley walked slowly around the dome-shaped room, marvelling absently at the way things changed over the past few years. In the chair in the centre, under the apex of the dome, a full blood seraph was bound and held, his vessel bloodied and twitching in agony. In his mind, it wasn't the right angel, but he had no doubts that that day would come too, by and by.

This was his time, he knew. He'd held a prophet and no archangel had come down from Heaven to destroy him. In fact, he wasn't sure if any of the archs had even survived Castiel's great purging. It didn't seem likely. _My time_, he thought delightedly, _to consolidate and expand, to get what I need_. Heaven in such disarray that it didn't matter what he did down here, he would get away with it, and further his own plans without interference.

There was something about torture. Watching the blood and sweat and tears flowing. The almost-sexual charge of inflicting pain and the way that the victim would scream, face twisting in agony. It was an art, to get so close to overloading the physical limits of the victim, yet not, not give them the release in unconsciousness. He was too impatient for the full refinements, he knew. He was nowhere near the calibre of the demons who'd perfected every possible technique to draw suffering from every nerve, every thought and feeling until mind and body and soul were sucked dry. But he was expert enough to get what he needed. _Jack of all trades_, he thought with some self-satisfaction, _even if master of none_.

He pushed the tip of the cruciform sword into the shoulder of the angel, watching the brilliant white light spill out along with the vessel's blood, the scream tearing out of Samandiriel's throat as he moved the tip around a little in the open wound.

"What do you want?!" the angel shrieked at him. "I've given you all the names."

"No." Crowley looked at him reprovingly. "No. No. And no." He spun the short sword in his hand. "That's not what I want to hear."

The tip drove into the seraph under the ribs and Samandiriel screamed again. Crowley pulled the blade out, wondering if he should be thinking about the decibels in the room and his hearing.

"This hurts you more than it hurts me, so I can go on forever," he told the angel. He did miss the rack. He really needed one up here. "Which, in your case, forever means... well, forever."

Samandiriel sucked in mouthfuls of air, trying to let the pain wash through the nervous system of his vessel, let it dissipate, dissolve. The vessel was in a bad way. "When the angels find out what you're doing –"

"They'll be ... what? Put out?" Crowley cut him off mockingly. "I'm quaking, really."

He looked down at the seraph. "The power grid is so whacked out in Heaven, they don't even know you're not there." He shifted the sword in his hand again, a low-grade charge lighting up his nerves as he saw Samandiriel's involuntary flinch backwards. "So, on the count of three. One. Two."

He pushed the sword into the abdomen, twisting it as it drove through the organs and he felt the tip hit the wooden back of the chair. The angel's hands clenched on the arms of the chair, muscle and tendon becoming rigid as his scream echoed off the hard, curving walls. Crowley slid the sword free, a small smile playing around his mouth as he watched the angel's head drop forward, heard the desperation in his raw breathing.

"What happened to three?" Samandiriel asked shakily.

"I lied. I do that," Crowley said, his patience evaporating. "Just give me the other names."

Samandiriel looked into his face, his chest heaving, every inhale another stab of agony, every exhale sending the acid pain of torn flesh and ruptured organs flooding through his nervous system.

"There are no other names!" he ground out. "The next generation isn't born yet."

Crowley leaned close to him, searching the angel's eyes for the tells of a lie. "Truth?"

"Truth," Samandiriel admitted wearily. It didn't matter, one way or the other, that piece of information. He let his head fall forward. The names that he'd given the demon were another matter. He didn't know how he would atone for that. If he could ever atone for that. But if Crowley was right, and Heaven didn't know what had happened, what was happening down here, then perhaps that wouldn't matter either.

"Well, I suppose there's no reason to keep torturing you, then," Crowley said softly as he straightened up. He looked down at the bowed head of the angel, and shoved the sword into him again, smiling as the scream filled the room.

"Sorry. Once you get going, it's really hard to stop." He pulled the sword out and tossed it onto the cart nearby. He had the names. All of them. One of them would be his key. And what a key it would be.

He turned away, pulling off the blood-soaked apron and handing it to the demon who stood guard at the door.

"Keep him on ice," he said, glancing back at the seraph as he opened the door. "We've only just scratched the surface with this one."

* * *

_**US-87 S, Wyoming**_

Dean rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. He'd been driving for thirteen hours and Cheyenne was a few miles ahead, it was definitely time to stop for the night. He couldn't even remember what the hell lunch had been, four-hundred-and-fifty miles and six hours ago. He needed food. And something that would let him sleep, for a few hours, at least.

"You had enough?" Sam asked him quietly.

"Yeah, we'll stop as soon as we find a place," he said, tipping his head back a little to get the tension out of his neck.

The all-night strip had a fast food outlet and a liquor store in the same brightly lit stretch and he pulled in, stopping the car between the two and giving Sam his order. He got out as his brother went into the burger joint, and walked the other way, going into the small, dimly lit liquor store and grabbing a fifth of whiskey and a six pack of beer, paying for them on the new credit card. He glanced down at the name absently, one brow rising as it registered. _Jeffrey Lebowski_. Had he filled that in?

The clerk either hadn't seen the film or just wasn't interested and handed him the charge slip without a murmur. He tucked the card and slip into his pocket and carried the alcohol back to the car. It was one of those little things that could cock up everything, he thought uneasily, wondering if he'd been as careless with other stuff lately.

He could see Sam, through the plate-glass window of the outlet, still waiting for their food and he cracked the lid on the whiskey, tipping up the bottle and taking a shot from the neck, feeling the liquid roar down his throat and settle in his stomach.

Nightmares and his endless churning thoughts were taking his sleep again. Benny. Sam. Garth. The poison of truth and the fear of it. Not knowing what was coming and knowing it all too well. A thousand shades of grey that were making things murky, hard to see, hard to define. And the nagging sense of familiarity, that he'd been here before, him and Sam, lies filling up the spaces between them, his brother filled with self-righteous anger and a conviction that he was the one. The only one who could see how it was. Convinced that he was the stronger. Ignoring the facts.

He let his head tip back and closed his eyes. That … anger … was quiescent now. But that wouldn't last. And the next time it would be worse. And he couldn't think, couldn't imagine what was driving it. He hadn't helped, he knew. His disappointment in Sam had driven its own wedge between them, and he'd hammered it hard, not seeing what he was doing, only comparing his brother to his friend and finding Sam lacking. It hadn't been fair, that comparison. Hadn't been apples with apples.

A part of him wanted to tell Sam to go. To live a normal life. To figure out what he wanted and be free of all this. Another part refused to do it. He wasn't sure why. Loss? Being alone? Needing help and not knowing where else to look for it? He couldn't make sense of that stone-hard refusal to even raise the subject with Sam. He'd lost everyone else, was he really going to force his brother to stay so that he wouldn't have to feel those losses so deeply?

The passenger door opened and the scent of burgers and fries filled the interior as Sam put the bag on the seat between them. Dean caught his glance dipping to the bottle and flicking away, and sighed inwardly. He twisted around, dropping the bottle on to his duffle and shifting the six-pack closer to his brother, and dug into the paper sack, fingers closing around what was unmistakably a burger.

* * *

_**Fulton, Missouri**_

The diner hadn't been in use for the last five years. The long glass windows along the front had been soaped when they'd broken in. They'd painted them thickly with black paint on the inside, and over that, the wards and guards, the sigils and designs had been painted in blood.

Kevin opened the door and stepped into the trap without thinking about it, turning and locking the door behind him. The big room was completely silent and he glanced down at the broad circle he stood in, then up at the mirrored image of it painted on the ceiling directly above him. It wasn't that hard to keep themselves safe, although finding butchers who were willing to sell the quantities of blood they needed was chancy, from town to town.

He walked to the long formica-covered counter, and set down the plastic bag of groceries, turning his head as his mother rose from behind it, the brilliantly-coloured water rifle in her hands lowered as she looked at him.

"Everything go okay?" she asked him, setting the plastic gun on the counter, within reach of her hand.

"Yeah, not a sign of anything," he replied morosely. "So long as we keep moving and stay off the grid, we'll be fine."

Linda Tran looked at her son, recognising his weariness. "No, it's not fine. We're not fine. Living in rat-infested hovels and running from cursed creatures? This is no life, Kevin."

Kevin shook his head. "It's my life. I'm the one dragging the prophet load. I'm sorry I pulled you into it."

"Don't be sorry. Be ready," Linda said firmly, taking the bag and unpacking the groceries into a cupboard below the counter. "We've got to stop running and start taking a stand."

He looked at her in disbelief. "Okay, you know that's crazy."

"No, it's not," Linda said, straightening up and looking at him. "Not if we have the bomb you used on Crowley's demons."

Kevin rolled his eyes. He'd known at the time that he never should've told her about that, or anything about his escape from Crowley.

"The thing I made had ingredients from all over the world," he said patiently, looking at her. "Demons had to get the stuff."

"That's why I went to an expert." Linda glanced at him. "Someone who can get those things for us."

"What?" He stared at her. "Who?"

"I hired a witch," she said.

He wasn't sure he'd heard that right. "A witch?"

Her narrowed slightly at the tone of his voice. "Don't say it as if your mother doesn't know what she's doing, Kevin."

"How'd you even find a witch?" Assuming that it was a real witch, he added to himself.

"I found an esoteric store when we were going through Illinois last week. You were getting food, I think … anyway, there was a card there and I took it," she said, seeing the disbelief on his face. "She's the real thing, I tested her first."

"How? Exactly?"

"She did a reading over the phone. Got everything right, down to what you were wearing that day," she said smugly.

"What makes you think you can trust her?" Kevin sighed.

"I don't trust her, at all," Linda turned away. "That's why I didn't give her the exact quantities or tell her how to blend them."

He felt his brows shooting up. "You told her we were making demon bombs?"

"Of course not! I told her we needed ingredients for a spell," she snapped back at him. "No other details."

"And how's she supposed to contact us when she has them?"

"She doesn't. I'll call her and when she has what we need, we'll arrange a meeting." She shook her head at him. "What we're doing now, we're safe enough, yes. But we're not getting anywhere. We need to do something, Kevin, something proactive. We can't just keep running."

"I know, Mom," he said quietly. She was right about that. They had to make some kind of a move. Perhaps the witch would give them what they needed without it being a trap. Perhaps Crowley would get hit by a bus. All things were possible. Most were highly unlikely.

* * *

_**Salina, Kansas**_

Sam looked down at the address in his notebook as the car pulled up in front of the house, then glanced at his watch. It was only a little after six. He got out and walked across the quiet, dark street to the brightly lit porch of 442.

Knocking at the door, he saw the woman appear hesitantly through the glass panes in the top half of the door. He held up his FBI identification and forced a smile as she came into the hallway. Small and slender, her face was hollowed out, as if she hadn't been sleeping … or eating, he thought.

Lauren Hagar opened the door slowly, leaving the chain on as she looked at them.

"Ms. Hagar? Agents Roth and Malloy. We want to speak to you about Aaron Webber's abduction," Dean said, putting his badge back into his jacket pocket.

She looked at him nervously. "Like I told the police, one minute I was taking Aaron to get cleaned up, and the next minute ... I woke up in a park three blocks away."

"And you have no memory of what happened?" Sam asked, brow creasing as he injected a slight note of incredulity into his voice.

"No," she said, her voice shaking slightly. "He was just gone."

Sam pulled out his phone, turning away from her as Dean watched her face carefully. "Can you think any reason why somebody would want to harm him? Um, any enemies?"

"Enemies?" She stared at him. "He's five."

Sam had turned to the street, speaking softly into his phone. "_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus ..._"

Lauren Hagar looked at him, frowning. "Excuse me?"

"It's, uh, code for your own safety so that you can't reveal anything under enhanced interrogation," Dean said quickly, mentally rolling his eyes as the words came out. He used to be so much better at lying. "Now, when you woke up on the floor, were there any signs of struggle?"

She looked back at him, shaking her head. "No."

Sam tucked the phone back into his jacket, looking at her. "Smell like sulphur?"

Both men straightened slightly as she stilled in the doorway, blinking rapidly as her expression changed to uneasiness. "How did you know that?"

Sam looked away, his smile humourless. "Lucky guess. Thanks for your time."

She nodded uncertainly and closed the door as they turned away and started down the steps.

"No reaction to the exorcism," Dean said as they hit the sidewalk.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, not possessed – at the moment." He glanced sideways as they crossed the street. "But there's no doubt a demon got a hold of Aaron Webber."

Dean glanced at his brother, hearing the blunt edge of anger in his tone. He nodded slowly as they looked at each over the roof of the Impala. "Question is … why?"

* * *

They drove with the windows open, the air heavy and oppressive and the mutter of thunder in the distance, the horizon flickering and strobing as the thunderheads built. Dean glanced at Sam, who sat staring silently through the windshield. His brother was still humming slightly with an inborn tension, visible in the slightly thinned lips, the occasional jump of the muscle at the point of his jaw. He wasn't sure what had sparked it, exactly. It could've been as simple as the child in the case. Neither of them handled that all that well. Or it could've been something deeper. He couldn't tell.

Inside the room, the glass in the window frames oscillated a little as the storm drew closer. They changed and ate their take-out in silence, listening to the rumbling, lost in their own thoughts of who or what had been collecting these people. Was Crowley at the bottom of it, he wondered as he picked up the trash from the meal and tossed it into the trash can, veering to the fridge and getting out two bottles of beer. He passed one to Sam and sat down again. Would demons act on their own? What possible use could a five-year-old child be to the King of Hell?

Sam finished his beer in three long swallows and looked at Dean. "This is making me nuts, I can't think of any reason for these people to be taken."

Dean nodded. He had the same problem. Sam looked at his watch and shook his head.

"I'm going to crash. Do something useful." He got up and walked to the bed, pulling off his clothes and dumping them on the floor.

Dean rose as well, flipping off the lights and getting out the laptop. He couldn't sleep, not yet. He wanted to look the news articles again, see if he'd missed anything. He looked up at the crash of thunder overhead, lightning close by lighting up the room and fading away.

There was nothing in the articles, he thought morosely as he read through them. Spread out all over the country. Nothing to tie any of it together. No connections between the people taken. No connections between the disasters that had occurred at the same time. None of them had been exactly normal, but none had been completely inexplicable either.

Lightning filled the room again and he glanced at the window. He froze as he saw the man – the _angel_ – standing outside, Cas' face clearly visible through the glass, lit up by the bolt. He could hear his heartbeat, loud in his ears, was distantly aware that his chest was aching and he released the breath he held as the light died.

He shut the laptop and dropped it on the bed, walking to the window, slowing as he got closer and saw that there was nothing there. No one stood outside. Lightning flashed again, lighting up the grassed area vividly. The angel had vanished. Again.

_If you really saw him_, he thought, a trickle of ice spreading down his spine. _If he was ever there to begin with_._ If you aren't going crazy._

He heard his brother roll over in the bed behind him.

"Dean? What's going on? Are you all right?" Sam's voice was soft, worried.

"I don't know." Dean stared at his reflection in the glass as another bolt of lightning lit up the night. Was he alright? Or was something going on, something worse than how he'd felt when he got out. Something wrong. With him. "I just saw something."

Sam threw the covers aside. "Uh, you saw what?"

"Cas," Dean said, a little reluctantly. He wasn't sure why he'd said it. Sam already figured him to have a few loose. But he couldn't lie. Not now. His heart was sledging inside his ribs. He needed someone to talk to about this.

"Cas?" Sam got up and walked to his brother's side, looking out the window. "Where?"

"Right there," Dean looked at the spot he'd seen the angel standing, dragging in a deep breath. "And–and–and earlier … on the road. I feel like I'm seeing him," he added, a grimace flashing over his face as he heard the tremble in his voice. _Goddamned angel. They'd been so close_.

Sam looked at him. "That's ... not possible. I mean, you said it yourself. You made it out and he didn't … right?"

He watched Dean's jaw tighten, saw the tension in his brother's shoulders. Was seeing the dead angel another symptom of the combat fatigue Dean was trying to suppress? Or was it that whatever had happened down there was slowly starting to come out, breaking past his brother's control finally?

For a moment, Dean was lost in Purgatory again, following Benny through the thick undergrowth, hearing Cas' footsteps behind him. Trying to climb. _Nobody gets left behind. _He slowly came back, aware of his brother standing beside him, watching him worriedly_._

"I tried so damn hard to get us the hell out of there," he said, glancing at Sam and turning away. _Didn't I?_ He walked away from the window, not knowing where he was going, driven to move by the emotions churning inside. Were his memories accurate? Everything had happened fast …

"I know you did."

Dean closed his eyes, hearing that despairing cry in his head. He would keep hearing it, he knew, for as long as he was breathing, see the light swallowed on the hill. He'd saved Benny. But he hadn't been able to save Cas. "There was nothing I could do."

"Dean," Sam said. Dean turned a little, looking past him to the window, the rain pouring down outside. "You did everything you could."

He looked up at his brother for a moment, hearing the genuine sympathy in Sam's voice. That understanding hit him hard. That understanding came from his little brother – his little brother he hadn't seen in a while. Hadn't felt in a while. "Yeah, but why do I feel like crap?"

Sam looked away. There were a lot of answers to that. He couldn't suggest any of them. Dean wouldn't accept them, not now, not with everything else going. He shrugged slightly. "Survivor's guilt?"

"Hmm."

It wasn't survivor's guilt, he knew. Just guilt. Nobody gets left behind. But somebody had. And it wasn't the first time.

Sam looked at him, seeing the muscles twitching under his brother's skin. He knew suddenly what Dean was thinking about. _Anna. Ellen and Jo. Adam_. His brother's personal torture chamber. "Dean, if you let it, this is gonna keep messing with you. You got to walk past it."

Dean nodded slightly as Sam walked past him to the bathroom. He knew that it was going to keep messing with him. He couldn't keep pretending to himself.

_You don't give in, you don't give up, no matter what it costs, no matter what happens!_ His father's voice filled his mind and he stared at the window, the walls that held everything behind them thinning to tissue for a moment, his throat closing up tightly as he fought to keep it all back. Had he given up? He couldn't remember. Had he left Cas to die, when trying harder would've saved the angel? He couldn't remember that either. He was here. Alive. Breathing. Cas was not. What did that tell him?

* * *

_**Atlantic, Iowa**_

The room was in the basement of the main part of the factory, lined partly in over-sized soundproofing blocks and lit haphazardly with vertical fluorescent lighting at eye-level. Crowley had no idea who'd handled the design or what the functionality was supposed to be, but it was the least dungeon-like of all the rooms at his disposal. The octagonal table had been a surprise, perhaps used at one time to control the electronic systems within the factory, it now resembled an eighties nightclub bar more than anything else, eight under-lit perspex panels slanted slightly to the centre. He walked up to it, looking at the group who sat around the edges.

"Are we on a spaceship?"

Crowley looked at the man sitting across the table from him. Justin Hurst. Sixty-two. Wire-rimmed glasses not helping with what was clearly an over-active thyroid problem.

"Sorry?" The demon looked around the room blankly. The table might've contributed to the suggestion, he supposed. It was a tad Trekkish.

"Snapping us up from our homes, our families, teleporting us to this m-mother ship," the woman to his left added her thoughts to the conversation. Crowley looked at her. Krista Morrison. Thirty-nine. Single. Four cats.

"Mother ship?"

"You're aliens, right?" Hurst looked at him expectantly. Crowley looked down at the tablet lying on the table.

"Possibly a long shot," he murmured to himself as he picked it up. "Does this mean anything to you?"

Hurst leaned forward, adjusting his glasses slightly as he squinted at the tablet. "I don't read Chinese."

"Talk about the dumbing down of America," Crowley muttered to himself, sighing inwardly. He looked around the table. "Anyone? Come on. It's fun. Give it a go."

The people sitting around the table stared at him blankly. "You hapless toads are utterly clueless, aren't you?"

_Had the angel been lying to him the whole time? Were these representatives of middle America prophets or just names Samandiriel had fished out of the air? _He was going to have his guts for garters if he had been, he thought coldly.

The man to his right threw down the serviette he'd been holding and got to his feet. "I-I-I got a wife and kids. I-I got bills. I can't miss work."

Crowley looked at him. Dennis Adams. Forty-one. _Not part of the spaceship brigade but definitely going to cause problems_. He closed his eyes and spoke softly. "Sir."

"I got rights!" Adams stared at him, emboldened by the mild reaction.

Crowley's eyes snapped open. _Rights?_

"Where's my one phone call?"

The King of Hell lifted his hand, twisting it sharply, the gesture reminiscent of turning on a tap. Adams' mouth snapped shut as his ribcage snapped inside, the ends of the broken bones stabbing simultaneously into his lungs, stomach and heart. Blood filled his throat and mouth as he staggered sideways, hitting the wall of the room and sliding down it. He stopped moving as he hit the floor.

Crowley lifted his gaze from the lit panel of the table top. "Anyone else want to complain?" He looked around at the people facing him. Their faces were no longer blank. Now they were in varying states of shock and terror. It really wasn't much of an improvement. "Hmm?"

Beside him, Karen stood, and took a step closer.

"Um ..." She picked up the tablet and started to speak, glancing at Crowley's face nervously. "We hold this ... um, maybe these ... truths to be ... " She stopped as Crowley turned the tablet in her hands ninety degrees.

"Oh." She smiled down at the tablet. "Oh, right. That's – that's better, yeah."

Crowley turned away from her, leaning on the table and looking around it. Either the angel had lied outright to him. Or there was something else missing. Something he didn't know about the way this worked. Because he was pretty bloody sure that these people had no idea of what they were – or were supposed to be.

* * *

_**Fulton, Missouri**_

Kevin watched his mother as she ducked behind the booth seat to the right of the door.

"Why is she coming here? I thought you said you didn't trust her?"

"I don't," Linda Tran agreed readily. "But we can leave as soon as she does, and be out of reach by morning, so it doesn't really matter where we meet her. And everything is all set up here – the traps, our equipment. It's more efficient this way."

"Fine."

He exhaled gustily, looking away. His mother might bitch about the way they were living, but he could see that it was giving her more energy and reason to get up in the morning than she'd had since he'd started high school.

The knock made him start and he took a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder at the booth behind him before he reached for the locks.

The woman who stood outside was in her mid-thirties, he thought, brows rising slightly as he took in her appearance. She was very slender, dressed in black jeans and a short, close-fitting black jacket, long blonde hair loose down her back. Dark brown eyes, heavily lined in kohl, looked back at him and he stepped aside, watching her glance down at the floor, her mouth curving into a small smile as she stepped into the trap.

"I see you know what you're doing," she said, stepping out again on the other side. She glanced right and one brow rose delicately. "You can come out now, Mrs Tran, I've made it through the trap with no problems."

Linda rose from her hiding spot and looked at the woman. "Did you bring everything?"

"Of course," she lifted a wide-mouthed canvas bag from her shoulder and handed it to the older woman, glancing at Kevin. "It was an interesting list."

Linda opened the bag, looking inside, her hand pushing through the small plastic bags of ingredients. "What is this?"

She looked at the witch, eyes dark with anger. "I was clear. The quantities I gave you were not negotiable."

The blonde tilted her head slightly, smiling. "Oh, relax. The rest is waiting. This is just a sample of what you'll get when I get paid for what these ingredients are really worth."

"That was not the agreement!" Linda snapped.

"It is now," the witch smiled coolly at her. "We're not talking about some little love spell or banishing ritual here, Mrs Tran. What you've requested, that took a lot of trouble to get. A lot of trouble. I had to call in some favours that I'd been saving. Some of it is … remarkably esoteric, even I hadn't heard of them before."

She looked at Linda's tight expression. "So you will be paying the market price for the rest, or I'll keep it and you'll have to make do with what I've brought." She looked around the long room, lifting a shoulder in a careless shrug. "It's your choice. I'll be back in the morning to finalise our transaction."

She turned back to the door, stopping in the trap and raising a dark blonde brow at Kevin. He stared at her for a moment then moved forward, opening it. She smiled and walked out and he closed it behind her, turning back to his mother when the locks were secured.

"Still think this was a good idea?" he asked her tiredly.

* * *

_**Salina, Kansas**_

Sam watched Dean as he polished and reassembled the last of the guns, putting it back in the gear bag and zipping it up. He hadn't said much all day, withdrawn, his eyes often distant, lost in some memory or another, Sam thought.

He wasn't sure how to help him. In fact, it'd come as something of a surprise that he'd wanted to help him. It'd been the first time in a while that he'd felt that old pull, to get his brother to open up, to talk about what was hurting him, to share the pain instead of burying it – or attempting to bury it. Sam ran his hand through his hair distractedly. He didn't know why that feeling had come back but it was reassuring. It was familiar. It made working together easier.

He looked back at the screen as Dean walked into the bathroom, turning on the tap to wash the oil and solvent from his hands. He'd expanded the search out of curiosity, and the results were surprising.

"Hey, so it's not just Americans who are vanishing," he called out, reading the translated article from Italy. "Uh, this guy, Luigi Ponzi disappeared walking between two subway cars in Rome. And right above ground, there was a freak hail storm."

Dean rinsed his hands and splashed water over his face, the cold water shaking him free of his thoughts for a restful moment.

"So, we going to Rome?" he asked, looking at himself in the mirror, seeing the doubts that still filled his eyes. He frowned slightly and looked down again. "Can we get there without flying?"

He reached for the towel, hanging beside the basin and dried his face, straightening up and looking into the mirror again. Behind him, the angel stood, his skin lit up by the cool, white bathroom light. Dean turned around fast, half-expecting to see nothing, the shock when Castiel remained standing there catching at his breath.

"Hello, Dean," the angel said quietly.

"Cas?" The word was barely audible as he stepped forward, reaching out to touch Castiel's shoulder tentatively. _Here. Real. Alive_. Memory bombarded him again. _Flat light. Grey dust. Black shapes crowding out the light. Pain. Blood_. Anger and shame intertwined so tightly he couldn't see past them.

"I'm here. Real," Castiel said, turning to look at Sam over his shoulder. "Hello, Sam."

Sam looked past the angel to his brother's face. He looked like … he looked like someone had taken what he'd known of the world and turned it upside, Sam thought uneasily. He'd seen the same expression on Dean when their father had come out of the gate in Wyoming. A mixture of disbelief, of hope and pain and fear and anger, none of them dominant, warring in his eyes.

Sam got up and gestured to the other chair, looking at Castiel. The angel looked back at Dean and turned, walking through the room to the table. Dean followed slowly, leaning up against the small dividing counter between the kitchenette and the main room, his gaze still locked on Cas, arms folded in unconscious defensiveness across his chest.

"Unbelievable, man. I-I cannot believe it," Sam said, staring across the table. "You're actually here."

In the other chair, Cas leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he looked between them. "Yes, I've been trying to reach out, but for whatever reason, I wasn't at full power. So I couldn't connect with you.

Sam looked up at Dean. "That must have been why you kept seeing him. I mean, you think?"

"Yeah," Dean agreed absently. Sam's attention sharpened as he watched Dean straighten, his face screwing up as he looked down at the angel. "Yeah, uh, I got to be honest. I-I-I'm thinking, how the hell did you make it out? I mean, I – I was there. I know that place," he said, his brows drawing together as memory thickened his voice.

"I know how we had to scratch and claw … and kill … and bleed … to find that portal and make it through it, and it almost finished me," he said slowly. There was no way. No way at all that Cas had gotten out on his own. And he'd left him behind. Left him _alone_. "So, uh... so how exactly are you sitting here with us right now?"

Castiel left out his breath and leaned back. He didn't know how to explain what had happened. He didn't understand it himself.

"Dean, everything you just said is completely true. And that's the strange part. I ... have no idea." He looked away as memories came back, his voice deepening a little.

"I remember endlessly running and hiding from Leviathan." _Night. Blackness in Purgatory. Day. And night again. And on and on._ He had no idea how long for. He'd been weary. "And then I was on the side of the road in Illinois." He looked up at Dean. "And ... that was it."

"And that – that was it?" Dean asked, unable to hide his scepticism. He looked down at the angel, suspicion curling up through him like the tendril of a poisonous vine, hating the feel of it, but unwilling to let it go. Something had helped the angel. Something had pulled him out.

"Yes," Castiel said, a thread of defensiveness in his tone. He looked at Sam, noting that he didn't look disbelieving, didn't seem suspicious. He looked down, wondering at Dean's disbelief. He didn't know how he'd gotten out. He hadn't thought of it, really. Perhaps he should've. His gaze sharpened on his clothing, the grey dirt ground into his hands, into his clothing, slowly becoming aware of the mix of scents rising from him. "Oh. I'm dirty."

Dean pushed aside the churning questions, focussing on him with a slight shrug. "Yeah, well, Purgatory will do that to you. You can wash up …" He gestured vaguely behind him at the bathroom.

He stood aside as the angel got to his feet and walked to the bathroom, turning to watch him go, his uneasiness deepening. He should've been feeling glad that Cas was out, he thought, glad that he'd survived. He couldn't find that. Only confusion and the uncomfortable prickling sensation in his nerves that there were too many parts missing, too many things unexplained. There wasn't a moment that he didn't remember, in agonising detail. He'd been convinced that the angel had been dead _(you didn't try hard enough to save him)_. Convinced that nothing could have saved him _(you could've but you left, left him behind)_. He _had_ tried. It hadn't been enough.

"Dean?" Sam sat in the chair, looking at his brother's back, wondering what was going through Dean's head. He'd thought that Dean would be overjoyed that Cas was here, alive, back. The disbelief – the suspicion – had come as a surprise.

Sam's voice filtered in through Dean's thoughts slowly. "Huh?"

"You all right?"

He turned around and walked to the table, looking at Sam. "You do see something ... severely wrong here, right?"

Sitting down opposite his brother, his voice was low as he leaned forward. "Sammy, I remember every second of leaving that place. I mean, I remember the – the heat, the stink, the pain, the fear. I have that whole ugly mess right here, and he says he has no idea how he got out?" He looked at his brother, not sure what he was trying to get across to Sam, not sure he knew himself what was driving the uneasiness he felt. "I – I'm just not buying it."

Sam leaned back. "So what, you think he's lying?"

"I'm saying something else happened," Dean said, the conviction that something was wrong strengthening as he thought about it. "There was no way he was fighting his ass out alone. No way."

"All right. So, who ... or what got him out?" Sam asked. He could see that Dean was building a case. He wasn't convinced it was justified, but he could see his brother was.

"Exactly."

They both turned to look as the bathroom door opened and the angel walked back out into the room, drying his hands on the hand-towel. In new clothes, hair trimmed, beard gone, skin smooth and clean again, Cas looked as he had when they'd first met him. An angel of the Lord. In a trenchcoat.

He looked at them. "Better?"

Sam smiled slightly, exchanging a glance with his brother. Dean nodded, his attempt at a smile falling apart before it was begun as he looked at his friend uncertainly.

* * *

_**Fulton, Missouri**_

The rap on the door was sharp and loud. Kevin looked at his watch with a sigh.

"Well, at least she's punctual," he said to his mother over his shoulder as he went to open it. Linda Tran scowled at him, pulling her purse out and setting it on the counter.

The witch walked through the devil's trap and stopped in front of her, glancing at the purse. "I see you've decided to be reasonable."

"This is extortion," Linda hissed at her.

"No, not really," she smiled. "Just a normal transaction in today's cut-throat world."

"How much?"

"Twelve thousand dollars."

"What?!" Linda stared at her.

"That's with the discount, Mrs Tran," the witch said comfortably. "If you were going to try and find those ingredients yourself, it would've cost you twenty, assuming you knew where to start."

Linda struggled to get her shock under control. She had the cash, barely. It would mean that they would have to think of some way to get more out of the accounts, somewhere they couldn't be tracked. She could feel Kevin's eyes on her and saw the witch glance at him, eyes narrowing slightly as she took in his expression.

"Take it or leave it, I don't mind either way," the blonde turned back to her, one brow lifted.

"Where is the rest?"

"Outside. Safe. Do we have a deal or not?"

Linda picked up her purse, staring down at it for a moment. The witch chuckled softly.

"Do you have a restroom in here?" she asked. "I could freshen up while you make up your mind?"

"Down the hall," Kevin said, gesturing to the end of the room. She nodded and turned away, black high heels clicking over the filthy linoleum floor.

"That wipe us out?" Kevin looked at his mother. Linda shook her head, setting her jaw as she heard the doubts in his voice.

"No, not quite," she answered, opening the purse and pulling out a wad of cash. She put the purse down and started counting. "We'll have to figure out a way to get the accounts unfrozen, enough to get more but we'll be able to live on what's left here for a short time."

He nodded, looking up as the witch's heels announced her return.

"Charming little place you have here," she said as she came back into the room. "Very prophet-in-exile."

"What did you say?" Kevin looked at her narrowly.

"You really should use the devil's traps on every entrance, Kevin."

Kevin and Linda turned slowly to look behind the witch. Crowley stood at the door, smiling humourlessly at them. Beside him, a tall man in a suit had eyes that were black, from corner to corner.

"Salt alone is easy to shift," he added, gesturing to the witch. "I'm surprised that you trusted a witch, Kev, they're not exactly renowned for their trustworthiness, and as a general rule, they are rather loyal to the entities that give them their power," Crowley continued conversationally, walking into the room. "Or was that your mother's idea?"

He glanced at the witch. "Off you go, dear. I have no further need of your services."

She looked at the money still in Mrs Tran's hand. "There's the small matter of my remuneration."

"Greedy _and_ disloyal?" He looked at her thoughtfully. "My, my, you will be busy when you get down to our place. I've had a shocker of a day, I would advise against pushing too hard. Or at all."

Kevin watched her eyes widen. She turned on her heel and walked out through the door immediately, and a moment later they heard a motorbike engine start up, and roar away.

Crowley looked back at Kevin. "Now, where was I?"

Linda stared at him, moving to stand in front of Kevin. "Please. Take me. Leave my son alone."

"You? What would I do with you?" Crowley looked at her in astonishment. He turned to the demon beside him. "Kill her. Destroy the makings for the spell."

"No!" Kevin shouted helplessly, staring at him.

"Yes," the demon said decisively. "Say goodbye to Mommy."

He snapped his fingers and Linda watched them disappear, fear spreading an icy chill through her. It was the movement of the demon to her left that broke through the fear and galvanised her into action. She dove behind the glass-topped counter, rolling out the other side, the water rifle in her hands.

_Get him into the trap_, she thought, pumping the holy water in long, hard streams over him, her teeth gritting as his screams rose above the sound of sizzling flesh. The demon's eyes were closed, his arms raised over his face, and he backed away as she moved forward, not seeing the circle on the floor, or the one on the ceiling until he'd stepped into it.

She lowered the water gun, staring at the demon. This was an opportunity, she thought firmly, shutting away her fear, and her doubts. But it wasn't one she could handle on her own. Kevin had been wrong to run. Dean had tried to kill her, and she could understand her son's difficulty with that. And by no means had she wanted to die. But she knew without a flicker of a doubt that had she been in the man's position, she would have done exactly the same thing. She'd been prepared to give up her soul for her son. Why had he thought that her life was worth any more?

Crowley was going down, and she wanted to be around when it happened. Wanted it so much she could taste it. She needed allies. Strong ones. And there were only two that she knew of whom she trusted enough to call on. She turned away from the devil's trap and went to her purse. Pulling out the small white card that Sam had given her, she picked up her phone. They could help, she was sure of that. They were probably the only ones who could.


	15. Chapter 15 A Prophet in the Hand

**Chapter 15 A Prophet in the Hand**

* * *

The scream echoed around the room and Crowley shifted the angel sword in his hand, yanking it out with reluctance.

"You lied, Samandiriel. I always thought that angels couldn't – lie, that is," he said, leaning close to the angel's face.

"I didn't lie."

"No? No," Crowley smiled, leaning back a little. "No, you just omitted certain facts, right?"

"You didn't ask."

"I'm asking now," Crowley snarled, lifting the tip of the blade to the angel's eye.

Samandiriel wondered what would happen to him, if the demon pushed the blade through. Was it enough of a fatal wound to release him? Would he fragment into a million pieces, become another wave of light in the universe? Or would he be snuffed out, cast into darkness and extinguished forever? He wasn't sure that either option wasn't preferable to what he was feeling right now.

"The prophets you kidnapped are future prophets," he said, staring at the foreshortened point of the sword. "Kevin is the current prophet. There can only be one at a time."

Crowley's mouth stretched out in a slow smile. "One at a time, I see."

He straightened up, turning away. "So while Kevin is alive, those other imbeciles have no idea who or what they are?"

"That's right. They're innocent."

Crowley glanced back over his shoulder. "No one is innocent, Samandiriel, not even you, not any more."

The angel closed his eyes. The demon was right. He should have remained silent.

Crowley tossed the sword back on the table. "You've been very helpful. Get to keep your wings for another day."

He nodded to the demon standing by the door. "Put him back in the freezer."

* * *

_**Salina, Kansas**_

The Impala didn't smell quite the same anymore, Dean thought, sitting in the car outside the liquor store. Something had gone from the interior, something from his past. He couldn't work out what it was.

On the seat beside him, a brown paper bag lay next to a six-pack of beer. He didn't look at it but he could feel it there. Waiting for him. He closed his eyes, reliving the memories again, searching for the truth. There'd been nothing he could do. Nothing at all. He sure of that. Almost sure of it.

He opened his eyes and twisted the key, the low rumble failing to bring the usual feeling of satisfaction and freedom to him. Twisting around, he reversed out of the slot and drove out of the almost-empty parking lot, ignoring the acceleration of his heartbeat, ignoring the tightness in his chest. Cas was back and he should let it go. Just let it all go and focus on what was happening here and now.

* * *

He opened the room door, and walked in, glancing at the angel who was sitting less than three feet from the television set, apparently riveted to the screen, the remote in his hand clicking steadily as he flicked through the channels.

"What's the latest?" he said brusquely to Sam as he passed him, tossing the keys down and setting the six-pack on the counter. The brown paper bag had remained in the car.

Sam was staring at the laptop, leaning on his hand. He sat up a little at the question, his attention still on the screen.

"The latest is ... nothing," he said, exhaling noisily. "It's like it all stopped. No freak disappearances linked to any freak natural events."

Dean pulled two cans from the plastic rings and set one down beside his brother, leaning over Sam's shoulder as he looked at the screen. It was filled with frames, front pages of dozens of newspapers from all over the country, around the world. His eyes skimmed over them, seeing the usual round of crappy events, but nothing that could be considered freakish.

"So, how many have we got, seven?" His gaze remained on the screen, his thoughts going back to the reports they'd found. Sam turned, looking down at the notebook on the table.

"Yeah, uh, Luigi, Justin, Aaron, Maria –"

"Maria, Dennis, Krista, Sven," Castiel intoned in a low voice. Dean and Sam both turned to look at him, Sam glancing back at his notes, confirming that the names Cas had just spoken were correct.

"I missed television." Castiel shook his head wistfully, staring at the screen.

"Wait, Cas. How did you know those are the names?" Sam asked, brow furrowed as he looked at the angel.

"Well, they're prophets," Cas said mildly, glancing at him and back to the screen.

"Prophets?" Dean asked. _Prophet_-prophets … like Chuck? The memory of the writer ghosted through his mind. _Like Kevin?_

"Yes, angels instinctively know the names of every prophet – past, present, and future," Cas explained shortly, his attention still on the television.

Dean gestured at the table as he walked closer to the angel. "So this list is the name of every one of 'em that exists?"

"Yes, until the next generation is born," Cas said. "Plus Kevin Tran, of course," he added, looking over at them. "The other seven are future prophets, since, uh, only one can exist at a time."

Sam's face scrunched up. "Uh, so how is Kevin a prophet if Chuck is a prophet?"

The angel looked down briefly. "I'm not sure what happened to Chuck, but …" He hesitated as he turned to Sam. "He must be dead."

Sam felt a small stab at the angel's prosaic statement. The scrawny writer had screwed up their lives in countless ways, but he'd helped too … had helped a lot. And as with everyone else they'd cared about, his reward had been death. Was that the way destiny was playing it out, he wondered? Everyone who helped them, doomed to die? That wasn't what he'd signed up for.

Dean leaned against the kitchen divider, a frown deepening as he looked at Cas. "So if Kevin, and all these people, are prophets … Cas, what happened to the archangels joined to 'em? Why wasn't Crowley turned into a pile of smokin' spit?"

Cas sighed deeply as he watched the advertisement playing over the screen. "It seems that the archangels are all dead."

Dean looked at Sam. "And what? No order of promotion up there? No one else around to take over their work?"

One side of the angel's mouth turned down slightly. "No. That's not how it works."

The brothers exchanged another glance, and Sam shrugged. Dean turned back to Castiel. "So, the next one comes off the bench if Kevin goes down?"

"Exactly," the angel said, turning to look at him. "And they have no idea who they are, of course."

"Crowley." Sam smiled humourlessly as he realised what the demon was doing, what he was after. He looked up at his brother.

"Insurance," Dean said, following Sam's thoughts. "Boy, he's getting desperate."

Sam nodded. "Explains all the weird phenomena." He looked back at the screen. "Lower-level demons nabbing heavy-duty cargo. The vessels of God's Word –" he exhaled softly. "Boom."

Castiel got up from the chair and walked to Dean's side. "I get the feeling something's going on."

Dean glanced sideways at him, repressing the acid comment that rose automatically. Cas still wasn't back. Not all the way, he thought bemusedly. He wasn't surprised, exactly. The angel had taken some hits that just weren't that easy to recover from. Not quickly.

Sam's phone trilled and he picked it up. "Hello."

His expression changed at the voice on the other end, he straightened abruptly in the chair. "Mrs. Tran? Well, where the hell have you –"

He listened and Dean watched him, feeling the prickle of the nerves on the back of his neck.

"What?" Sam stood up and looked at Dean. "Crowley's got Kevin."

* * *

_**Atlantic, Iowa**_

Kevin sat at the under-lit table, staring down at the stone tablet in front of him. He was in so much trouble, he thought, his eyes wandering over the familiar characters absently. Such a lot of goddamned trouble.

Crowley leaned on the table. "So, Kevin, as you can see, our relationship is much simpler now." He glanced around the table at the silent, staring faces of the people sitting around the edge. "You either help me, or you die and one of these fine specimens takes your place.

He looked at the young man's face consideringly. "I don't quite understand your hesitation."

Kevin glanced sideways at him. "You just killed my mother."

Crowley straightened up and walked around the table. "Very unfortunate. But to be fair, she was plotting to kill me and my kind." He stopped beside Kevin. "Kevin. Kev. I can do a great deal for a plucky lad like you."

"You'll just kill me as soon as I read the tablet."

Crowley sighed softly. It was true. Hardly a great insight. He shook his head.

"Are all young people so horribly cynical?" He straightened up, walking behind Kevin and sitting on the table. "It depresses me, Kevin."

"Here's the thing," he said quietly, looking down at the prophet. "I really want you to read the tablet because, frankly, this lot fail to inspire." Crowley looked briefly around at the faces again. "However, better a stupid prophet than a stubborn prophet, as the saying goes. So what's it going to be?"

Kevin remained silent, staring at the table. The one thing the demon couldn't do was force him to read it.

Crowley felt the resistance and smiled inwardly. _Time for a little show-and-tell. Emphasis on the show at this stage_. "Perhaps you doubt that I'm serious?"

He stood up and walked behind Kevin's chair, looking across the table and lifting his hand. On the opposite side of the table, Krista rose into the air, feeling her chest crushed, her airways blocked as she floated eight feet above the floor. Kevin watched her, his heart accelerating as she shook and gasped above them. _Do something!_ His mind was screaming but there was nothing he could do. He wasn't a hunter, wasn't a Winchester and the demon beside him held every card.

Crowley snapped his fingers and Krista's body exploded, blood and tissue and pulverised bone sprayed across the room, the table, those watching, coating everything in a sticky, coppery-sweet liquid. Everything except for the King of Hell. Crowley looked down at Kevin.

"So ... how many more do I have to kill, Kevin?"

* * *

_**US-50, Kansas**_

"Here," Sam said quietly as Dean drove slowly along the dark road. "Park here."

Dean pulled the Impala off the road and killed the engine. The car was silent. There wasn't much to say about the situation. When Mrs Tran arrived, they would know more, be able to figure something out, he thought. He was acutely aware of the angel, sitting in the back seat behind him. On the edges of conscious thought, questions were jittering, demanding his attention, demanding to be asked. He didn't want to think about them. He wasn't sure how long he could keep them blocked out, held back. Cas was right here, and he desperately needed answers.

He looked down the empty road, frustration building. "Where the hell is she?"

Sam glanced at him. "She'll be here. Uh, mile marker 96 was kind of the halfway point."

He could see the tension building in his brother and he looked away. Cas or Kevin, he wondered briefly. Didn't make much difference. Dean was humming, fingers tightening around and releasing the wheel, his face tight with whatever it was he was holding back. The signs were familiar, his brother's tells that something was eating at him, refusing to be buried, refusing to be ignored. He hoped that whatever it was, Dean would be able to control it for long enough to do their jobs and get Kevin back.

Memories crowded thickly and Dean could feel his pulse quicken in response to them. Flat pewter-coloured light and the angel's despairing cry. So much at stake and his thoughts thumping in his mind. _Not yet. Not now. Trust me, goddammit, Cas. Trust me_. Leviathan. And the ache of seeing him go, knowing he couldn't save him. _I couldn't do any more. I did everything I could. I did fucking everything I could!_

"Cas, can I talk to you outside?" Dean said abruptly, opening the door and getting out.

Castiel looked at Sam and opened the door. Behind him, Sam watched him go. _Cas, then_, he thought. He turned back to the windshield.

"What?" Cas asked, taking a few steps away from the car toward Dean.

Dean turned around to face him. "Exactly. What? What the hell happened? Back there. Purgatory. I told you I would get you out. We were there! It was like you just gave up." He stared at the angel, the memories unreeling chaotically in his mind. "It's like you didn't believe we could do it. I mean, you kept saying that you didn't think it would work. Did you not trust me?"

The words came out like a fusillade, driven by desperation, by the emotions that were threatening to break through. He needed an answer, he needed to know. Castiel's expression was regretful.

"Dean," he said quietly, looking at the man standing next to him, seeing beyond the walls and fortifications to the agony that lay behind them.

Dean stared at him. "I did everything I could to get you out – everything!" He stopped for a moment, looking at the angel, his eyes filled with the fear that permeated him.

Castiel saw it, his eyes narrowing slightly as he felt the change in the man standing in front of him.

And it came out, finally. "I did not leave you!"

"You think this was your fault?" Castiel asked gently, disbelievingly.

Dean looked at him. _Wasn't it?_ Hadn't he left? Hadn't he given up and gone, saving his own hide instead of turning back, trying harder, leaving no one behind. He didn't want to believe that, but how could he fight it? The angel had needed him. His responsibility had been to get them all out, all safe. Nobody left behind.

Headlights splashed through the vegetation and the sound of the engine broke through his thoughts. He turned with Cas to look at the car that drove around the corner, pulling up beside the Impala. Castiel watched it and turned back to Dean and for a moment they looked at each other. Dean felt as if his chance was slipping away and he swallowed, struggling against the feelings that were rampaging against the walls in his mind. _Forget it_, he told himself, forcing his gaze past the angel to the silver sedan. _Just forget it for now_.

Sam glanced at the headlights and started, getting out of the car as the sedan stopped beside him, glancing at Dean and Cas then back as Mrs Tran turned off the engine and got out of her car, walking around to the trunk, her gaze flicking between him and the angel and his brother.

"You can do this, can't you? You can get him back?" she asked quickly. Driving for the last two hours, she'd wondered at her belief in them, her confidence in them. She wanted something … something to tell her that it was going to be okay, that she hadn't lost her life's work through her own stupidity.

Dean walked slowly toward her. "How did Crowley find you?"

Linda looked down. "Oh, I hired a witch, and she ratted us out."

Sam flicked a disbelieving glance at his brother and looked back to her. "A witch? Why'd you hire a witch?"

"To get the ingredients to make demon bombs, of course!" Linda said irritably. Sam's face scrunched up as he looked at his brother. Dean rolled his eyes tiredly.

"These are Kevin's notes." She passed the spiral-bound notebook to Sam and he grabbed it, opening it and skimming over the contents.

"You have any idea where Crowley took him?" Dean asked. He'd forgotten how annoying Mrs Tran could be and how easy it was to get off track in a conversation with her.

Linda shook her head. "No."

She looked down at the trunk, a thread of satisfaction slipping into her voice as she continued. "But, uh ... this guy might."

The trunk opened and Dean looked into it, seeing the demon trussed up in lengths of rope, held immobile by the devil's trap painted on the inside of the trunk's lid. He walked to the back of the car. The woman had the capacity to surprise him every single time, he thought vaguely as he looked down. _How the hell had she gotten this guy into the trunk?_

"Huh." He reached for the long, thick blade sheathed against the back of his hip and drew out, holding it up as the demon's gaze shifted from him to the knife. "Let's talk."

Sam moved back to the hood, glancing at Mrs Tran as he walked. "Where're the ingredients?"

She pulled her gaze from what Dean was doing to the demon, and nodded. "In the backseat."

* * *

_**Atlantic, Iowa**_

Kevin looked at the table next to him. He didn't recognise most of the gore-covered instruments on it, but he had no problem guessing what they were used for. He bit back a hysterical laugh at the memory of entering the Winchester's basement the first time. Now he knew what a torture chamber looked like. Crowley pulled up a chair in front of him and he looked at the floor. It didn't help much. It was also covered in sprays of blood.

"I thought privacy might make it easier to chat," Crowley said softly. "Decision time, Kevin. How's this going to go?" He looked at the boy's tense face and felt impatience rising. The sense of time - his time - disappearing was growing.

"Don't be recalcitrant, Kevin. You know it brings out the worst in me," he said, the warning explicit in his tone.

Kevin's gaze flickered up to the demon's face then dropped again. _Can't make me read it_, he told himself firmly, _can't make me_.

Crowley looked at him, noting the tightness of his jaw with an inward sigh. _More show and tell_, he thought, snatching up a short knife. He held down Kevin's hand and cut off the little finger, the blade slicing easily through flesh, pinching and grinding through the bone.

The scream rang around and around the room. A little higher pitched than the angel's, Crowley thought, listening to the variations in tone until it ended in a deep, gurgling indrawn breath.

"All right!" Kevin cried out, his chest heaving. "Enough! I'll do it."

Crowley glanced knowingly down at his hand, a small smile curving up his lips. Showing was always so much more effective – and satisfying – than telling. He wasn't sure why he didn't start with it every time.

"Wise decision," he said, getting to his feet. He looked down at the blood running freely from the stump. "I suppose we'd better do something about that. Don't want you bleeding out in the middle, do we?"

He jerked his head to the demon at the door and the man left the room, the door clanging slightly behind him.

"Probably a good lesson to learn now, Kev, while you're still young," he said conversationally, looking absently around the dark room. "The only thing you'll ever get trying to be heroic is going to be missing body parts."

Kevin closed his eyes, struggling against the white-hot pain in his hand. It felt as if it was still there, his finger, throbbing and aching deeply. The demon returned with a small first aid kit and Kevin watched him undo the strap holding his wrist to the flat arm of the chair distantly, felt his hand lifted, the dressing pad going over the stump and a long bandage wound around his hand. The pain didn't lessen. It throbbed in time with his heart, pounding in his hand and his head, the syncopation making his stomach roil and knot.

"There we go," Crowley said as the demon undid the remaining straps. "Time to get to work."

Kevin though he might faint when he got to his feet. There was a moment when the room spun lazily around him and grey mists started to close in to either side of him. He felt Crowley's hand grip his arm above the elbow tightly and he forced his eyes open. The mists drew away again and he pulled in a deep breath.

"No sleeping on the job, Kevin," Crowley said softly next to his ear. "You get a little leeway for the shock. But if you even look like fainting, you'll be finding out how an acid bath feels, do you understand me?"

He nodded and followed the demon out of the room, forcing his eyes to open more widely when he stumbled into a wall, forcing his feet to keep moving, one in front of the other.

Crowley steered him into a small room along the hall, and he slumped into a chair gratefully, barely taking in the few pieces of steel framed furniture that were scattered through it. He sat at a glass-topped table, Crowley dropping into a steel-backed chair on the other side of it. On the table, the tablet was waiting for him and Kevin reached for it carefully, his fingers slipping over the engraved markings, feeling the warmth that seemed to spread from the stone to him. He felt the familiar jitter as some part of his brain shifted, and started to read.

An hour later, he was still reading, hearing Crowley's deep sighs and restless movements remotely. The stone was very warm in his hands now, and he couldn't feel the pain of the wound anymore, a soft and pleasant numbness infusing him.

"The next is ... "The demonic influence on the collective tapestry of the soul."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "Blah, blah, blah. Doesn't anyone ever edit this stuff?" He exhaled loudly, closing his eyes. "So far, as a writer, God's a snooze. No fun at parties, I hear."

Kevin slid his finger down to the next section. "Um, 'Demonic transport to the regions of Hell'."

"Tell me something I don't know!" Crowley snapped abruptly. At the back of his mind, he heard Winchester's voice, 'Tick-tock' mocking him. "Think macro. This is stupefyingly micro."

"How macro?" He looked over at the demon.

"Game changing," Crowley said, his voice dropping slightly. "Something to take advantage of the shattered remains of Heaven."

"This isn't a linear progression," Kevin said bluntly. "There's no table of contents. I have to read through it all to find out what each section is."

"Then read faster, Kev," Crowley said softly, his voice rasping in a thinly veiled threat. "Because I'm not a patient demon."

He lifted his hand and looked at it. A bright green and silver foil pinwheel appeared between his fingers.

"Yes?" He looked at the pinwheel and blew gently, making it spin.

"Well ..." Kevin looked down at the tablet, his fingertips resting against the stone as he read the section warily.

Crowley's head snapped around. "Don't provoke me, Kevin. You still have nine fingers." He looked back at the pinwheel and blew a little harder.

"This section has to do with building defensive weapons against demons," Kevin said reluctantly.

Crowley glanced over at him sourly. "Mm-hmm. You're familiar with that one, I believe."

"And this one ...," Kevin continued unwillingly. "It describes ... sealing the gates of Hell."

The demon straightened up and stared at him. "So it's true. It's there." He watched as Kevin nodded slowly.

"Clearly, humans cannot possess this thing. What was God thinking?" Crowley muttered to himself. "We'll get back to that."

He tossed the pinwheel aside and looked at Kevin, excitement lighting the dark eyes. "We're just getting to the sexy part."

* * *

_**US-71, Iowa**_

Dean stared at the road, the headlights lighting up the asphalt, reflecting from the white lines that divided up the line ahead symmetrically. The headlights of the silver sedan stayed behind him at a steady distance, Sam driving with Mrs Tran. Beside him, the angel was riding shotgun, his gaze on the road ahead as well, the silence between them almost tangible, filled with a vague sense of pitfalls and traps, swamps and marshes and jungle, places to get lost in if he raised the questions that were harrying him now.

_You think this was your fault? _He couldn't get the words out of his head, couldn't make sense of the tone of the angel's voice or the expression that had been on Cas' face when he'd said it. _I was the only one there_, he thought. _Who else could he blame?_

He wanted to ask. The question that burned in him wanted to come out. But he couldn't get it past his throat. He'd tried to convince himself that it hadn't been on him, tried to remember if he could've done more. That had been an exercise in futility as the memories had come and gone, and at each recall they'd seemed a little different, a little more angled this way or that. He'd finally realised that every time he looked at them again they would change, and now he wasn't sure what he remembered. Only that, deep inside, he wasn't sure if he'd done the best he could. If he could've done more, been stronger, faster … braver.

Not a good idea to get into this right before a job, he told himself angrily, fingers tightening around the leather grip of the wheel. No matter what had happened, what the angel knew or didn't know or remembered or didn't, it wasn't a conversation he could afford to have before he had to face Crowley. It would screw him up. Take the edge. And he needed that edge. He wasn't sure if the knife would kill the demon. He was itching to find out.

* * *

The black car turned off the gravel access road, kicking up dust in the early morning sunshine, and drove under the high loading dock shed, the heavy tarps dragging over the hood and roof as they passed beneath them. Dean flicked a look in the rearview mirror, seeing his brother following them exactly, Mrs Tran's silver sedan coated in their dust.

He pulled up alongside a tall fence, weeds growing through the razor wire that topped the chainlink, grass flourishing in the cracks in the concrete drive. The factory hadn't been operational in years, another one of Crowley's acquisitions for his above-ground endeavours.

Sam pulled in behind him, the cuffs going around Mrs Tran's wrist and the steering wheel as she turned to open her door.

"Sorry, Mrs. Tran," he said, clicking the lock home.

"Wait! What?!" Linda looked down at the steel handcuff around her wrist in astonishment. "My son is in there!"

Sam nodded, looking at her steadily. "Which means Crowley already has leverage. He doesn't need another hostage."

He watched Dean walk past the car and popped the trunk.

Standing behind the trunk, Dean looked down at the demon lying there. "This it?"

The demon raised his head slightly, looking around. "Yes."

It stared up at him as he reversed the knife his hand, looking at the long blade for a moment, then plunging it into the demon's chest. Red-gold light boiled from the demon's eyes and mouth as it burned up inside the vessel. Dean watched the light begin to die and slammed the trunk lid shut.

"Oh, come on!" Sam heard Mrs Tran's cry of fury as he closed the car door behind him.

* * *

Dean took point as they walked through the disused factory, Sam on his heels, the angel following them. Crowley liked a big entourage, and there would a few guards to get past before they could get in, he thought, moving down the steel staircase silently. He heard the scrape of the boot sole over the grasses in the concrete slabs and lifted an arm, fading back behind the iron girders supporting the building above them as the first of the demon's guards appeared at the end of the open passage. The meatsuit was tall and heavily built, lank black hair drawn into a pony-tail, sensing something was wrong but pinpointing it too late. Dean moved soundlessly behind him, gripping one shoulder as he drove the knife into the demon's back. He pulled the blade clear and let the body drop, looking up and down the junction.

"All right. I'll check that way," Sam said softly, heading right. Dean glanced back at the angel and nodded, heading left.

* * *

"Hold on," Kevin stared down at the tablet as it oscillated fast in his hands. The last section shimmered for a moment and slowly clarified. "This is different. It's – it's not text. It's like a personal note?"

"A personal note from God?" Crowley asked, brows rising.

Kevin read. "From ... the archangel ... Metatron."

"The scribe ...," Crowley said thoughtfully. "And suck-up. Took down God's word, picked up his cleaning," he added, shaking off the shiver that had run down his spine at the thought of the archangel.

Kevin looked over at him. "It's like a – a farewell note."

"Go on."

"Upon completion of this task, I take my leave of my master in this world. So ends the transcription of the sacred word for the defence of mankind. Into the hands of God's children thus passes the compendium of tablets," Kevin read slowly. A compendium. For everything, he wondered? What else what out there?

"Compendium?" Crowley asked, brow creased.

Kevin looked at him tiredly. "It's a collection of things, espec –"

"I know what a 'compendium' is, Kevin," the demon overrode him impatiently, resisting the urge to crush the boy into very, very small pieces. "What does Metatron mean?"

* * *

Sam moved fast along the narrow walkway between the caged-off pipework and the drop on the other side. He followed the stairs down, and saw them as he came along the catwalk. Four, blocking the door that led into the factory. He looked at the confined space for a moment and then continued down.

When he reached the bottom, he walked out into the open loading area fast, looking around exaggerately, stopping suddenly as he turned his head toward them. All four looked at him, eyes shifting to flat black.

"Winchester," the closest said, a curl of satisfaction filling his voice as he took a step forward.

Sam looked from one to the other. "Looks like you guys got me."

He watched as they advanced on him, his fingers curled around the body of the bottle in his inside pocket. When they were no more than a couple of yards away he yanked out the bottle and threw it to the ground in front of them, the small incendiary detonator exploding with the impact on the ground, igniting the contents. The fire that flashed upward and out wasn't even close to ordinary fire, Sam thought, throwing his arm over his face. It spread sideways and pulsed as it hit the demons, and beneath the shadow of his arm he saw them disappear, leaving only the burned-in images of their meatsuits' shadows on the wall behind them.

Wow, he thought, as the fire and light faded away and he lowered his arm. Dean was gonna _love_ these. He grinned a little at the thought and kept moving, picking the lock on the door and slipping through, listening in the semi-darkness for the next threat.

* * *

Castiel followed Dean along the hall, following the hunter exactly. He slowed a little as a new sensation trickled along the nerve endings of his vessel.

"We're very near Kevin," he said softly and lengthened his stride. Dean glanced at him and moved aside, letting the angel walk in front, matching Cas' increase in speed as the angel strode away purposefully.

Cas walked up the short flight of steps and Dean slowed at the top, feeling something, a change in the air movement behind him, the hint of sulphur in the air. He stopped and turned around, the demon nine or ten feet behind him, raising its hand slowly.

The knife spun in his hand as he went for it and he'd barely made a single stride before he felt the power of the demon, a monstrous invisible hand closing around him and squeezing tightly, compressing his ribs and lungs, lifting him off the ground and launching him into the hanging chains and shackles and hooks that covered the far wall. For a moment, he was caught there, the long curved point of a hook snagging one side of his jacket, missing his side by less than an inch. He tore it free, dropping to the ground and turning.

Castiel stood above the demon, his hand pressed over the demon's head, his face lit up with the white light that poured from the eyes and open mouth. The empty meatsuit dropped and Dean watched the angel stagger to one side of the hall, doubled over as he tried to keep his footing, chest heaving, the rasp of his breathing echoing in the hard, narrow space.

He leapt up the stairs, his hand gripping the angel's shoulder, keeping him upright as he glanced behind at the body on the floor.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked, looked at Cas' face, hearing the angel suck in deep lungfuls of air. "You're not all the way back, are you?"

"No," the angel admitted, straightening up and pulling in another deep breath. "Not yet."

"Then stay behind me," Dean looked back down the hall. "How far are we?"

"Not far." Castiel gestured weakly to the hall ahead of the them. Dean nodded and released him, walking fast up the hall, hearing the angel's slower footfalls behind him. They reached the end of the hall and Cas nodded to the left, his face still pale. Dean moved lightly, glancing back past the angel every few moments, every sense hyper-alert.

"Stop," Castiel murmured, standing still. Dean stopped, looking back at the angel and following his gaze to the doorway on his right. The ornate metal lock didn't seem much like a factory standard, he thought. He dropped to one knee and felt in his pocket for the picks, pulling them out and choosing the wrench and pick he wanted.

Seconds ticked by as he felt the heavy pins inside the lock, resisting him, refusing to move. He grimaced.

"It's not working," he muttered, trying to force the pin he could feel up. It refused to move.

"It's spelled. Only the key will open it," Castiel said slowly, looking down at him. "Dean, I'm going in."

Dean turned around fast, looking at him. "Cas, don't. You're not strong enough."

"There's no choice, not at this point," Castiel said, looking past the man to the door. "He's in there, with Crowley."

"What good will it do him if Crowley roasts you on a spit?" Dean bit out, brows drawing together furiously.

Cas smiled slightly. "There's another door to this room, I think." He gestured up the corridor and to the right. "Try that."

* * *

Sam looked at the shut door and kicked, pivoting on one leg, his full weight hitting the door just above the lock. The lock broke free and the door slammed open. He walked in fast, slowing when he saw the table, the pools and sprays of blood lit to ruby by the lighting underneath, the blood covering the walls and pylons and floor.

"Oh, no," he said softly. Not these people too. Not everyone.

A head lifted above the edge of the table, looking at him fearfully. Then another. And another. Sam looked around the silent room at the spattered and shocked faces that emerged, recognising the small boy who peered around a pylon with a sudden lift of his heart.

"Hey," he said quietly, looking from one to the other, around the room, and raising his hands pacifically. "Uh ... I'm here to help."

* * *

Kevin watched the demon as he looked away, Crowley's face filling with a rising excitement.

"There are more tablets," Crowley murmured softly, considering the ramifications of that. God's compendium for the defence of humankind. It had to mean …

"More than 'Leviathan' and 'Demon'."

_Eve's children …? What else? What else had God given his special creations? Defence against angels? Against the forces of Heaven?_

Behind him, the sound of beating wings filled the room and he turned, letting his speculations go as he faced the angel standing there.

"Castiel. Fresh from Purgatory. I wish you'd called first," he said, not even surprised that the angel was here. It seemed, somehow, inevitable. It meant that the Winchesters were here somewhere as well. That was inevitable as well. Annoyingly so.

"Crowley," Castiel acknowledged stonily.

Crowley watched him. "Which Castiel is it this time? I'm never sure. Madman or megalomaniac?"

"Kevin is coming with me," Castiel said, ignoring the comment, walking toward the prophet and the glass table that stood between them.

"I think not," Crowley snapped, his voice rising as he moved to the other side of the table.

"The Prophet's playing on my team now," he added, more quietly as he faced the angel over the table, the stone tablet and the boy-prophet between them.

From the sleeve of the trenchcoat, the angel sword dropped smoothly into Castiel's hand, Crowley's eyes going to it. The angel lifted it, holding it upright.

Crowley lifted his hand and glanced at it, and an angel sword appeared, the light glancing off the angles of the blade. Kevin looked at them, and slid from the chair, moving backwards to the wall of the room.

"So this is how it's going to be?" Castiel looked at the demon.

Crowley smiled wryly. "It's all very West Side Story, but let's be logical. You look like hell, and I should know. You're not up for this."

The angel began to glow, a pure white light filling his vessel, lighting the dark blue eyes to cerulean. Crowley felt his heart stumble in his chest as he watched the transformation. _It's bullshit_, he told himself firmly, _smoke and mirrors and good fucking lighting effects_. The angel didn't have it in him to go all the way.

"Maybe you can get it up, but you can't keep it up," he said, eyes narrowing a little as the light brightened.

He felt panic, somewhere deep inside, stretching out and fluttering a little as Castiel brightened, Heaven's power, the power of the souls that existed there, filling and overflowing the body of Jimmy Novak, once father and husband and devout believer. As the light grew, Crowley saw shadows behind the angel, one to either side.

Kevin's eyes widened as he watched the shadows of the wings unfold and spread slowly out across the width of the room behind the angel.

Crowley stared at him, fury and fear warring as his face screwed up against the brilliance of the light. "You're bluffing!"

Barely human in form or feature, Castiel stared at the King of Hell. "Do you want to take that chance?"

The seraph lifted his hand, light glowing from the palm as he stretched out to the demon. Crowley shuddered, and grabbed for the stone tablet lying on the glass. The angel's hand dropped, smashing the tablet and the table.

Crowley disappeared the second his fingers had curled around the stone and Castiel fell to the floor, the light dying instantly. Kevin jumped as the door beside him flew open, Dean standing in the doorway looking from him to the still figure on the floor next to the remains of the table's frame.

He crossed the shattered mess to the angel's side, crouching next to him as Kevin followed, kneeling on the floor to pick up the remaining half of the stone._ Better than nothing_, he thought tiredly. Dean helped Castiel to sit up, both man and angel turning to look at Kevin, and the tablet he held.

"Might want to get what's on that thing down on paper so we got a copy?" Dean said, looking at the piece of stone.

Kevin snorted. "This isn't – this half of the tablet would take me a year and few hundred thousand pages to transcribe, Dean. I don't know what happens to the brain of a prophet, but each one of these symbols, these characters," he said, holding up the stone and pointing to a single marking. "They represent a bookload of knowledge. I can take notes of the spells and the incantations and the rituals, but to write it all out? I don't have that much time."

Dean looked at Cas who nodded wearily. "It's true, unfortunately."

"Well, notes then," Dean growled, getting to his feet and pulling the angel up as well. "Anything so we're not so fucking dependent on the actual chunks of stone."

Kevin shrugged and nodded as he stood up. "I'll try."

Dean watched Castiel walk slowly out of the room. "And Kevin," he said quietly as the angel went out the door. "About Crowley … and uh, your mother –"

Kevin looked at him and shook his head. "No. I'm sorry that I said … what I said to you … in the note. I was wrong." He looked down at his hand, blood still seeping through the bandage. "She told me that she would have done it, to protect me, if Crowley had been in anyone else. I should've listened to you. And Sam. About playing for keeps."

Dean looked at the doorway, gesturing for the prophet to leave. "Uh, yeah. Sometimes it takes a while for that to sink in."

* * *

Sam put the notebook back into his duffle and closed the Impala's back door, turning and walking to the silver sedan. Mrs Tran stood next to Kevin, wiping the blood from his face and neck.

"Cops are on their way. They're gonna pick up the prophets," Sam told them as he walked up, stopping in front of them. "Um, they'll all be heading home."

"What about us?" Linda looked up at him.

"I called a friend of ours, Garth. He does what we do," he said, hesitating and smiling a little. "Well... in his own way. He'll keep an eye on you guys. No more going off on your own." He saw Mrs Tran stiffen slightly, turning back to Kevin and renewing her cleaning efforts. "You get that it was hiring that witch that got you into all this, right?"

"Yes." She nodded, not looking at him. He studied her for a moment, then looked at Kevin.

"How you holding up, Kev?"

Kevin's eyes were rage-filled when he looked up. "You kidding? I want to seal those bastards up forever." He lifted his hand and stared at Sam. "Took my finger."

Sam nodded, knowing where the rage would lead Kevin. "Cas thinks he might be able to fix that. In the meantime, just lay low till we get back to you, okay?"

Kevin nodded stiffly, looking away, and Sam sighed inwardly. Crowley had the important half of the stone, of course. He still wasn't sure leaving them with Garth was the best solution, but they needed to be able to move around and they were already carrying Cas along with them, another two would have been more like a National Lampoon's roadtrip than a serious attempt to hunt down the King of Hell.

* * *

Dean checked the guns and cleaned the knife automatically as he packed the gear away, his thoughts circling furiously around the actions of the angel. He zipped up the bag and settled it into the trunk of the car. Cas might have made it work but it could've gone either way, he thought angrily. He looked down at the sheathed knives, picking them and checking them.

"That was a bonehead move back there. You could have gotten yourself killed," he growled, his expression hardening as he threw the set into the trunk.

"Why didn't you wait for me?" he added, slamming the trunk lid as he looked at the angel standing beside him.

Castiel watched the Trans. "Well, I didn't get killed." He glanced at the man beside him. "And it worked."

"And if it didn't?"

The angel looked at him. "It would have been my problem."

Dean looked away. "Well, that's not the way I see it."

"Hey, everything isn't your responsibility," Cas turned to him, beginning to see what the problem was. It was, in some ways, the same thing – _things_ – he'd seen the very first time he'd met Dean Winchester, face to face. "Getting me out of Purgatory wasn't your responsibility."

"You didn't get out. So whose fault was it?" Dean's jaw clenched as he felt the load drop onto him. He could've tried harder. He shouldn't have left anyone behind.

Castiel frowned. "It's not about fault. It's about will."

He looked at Dean quizzically. "Dean, do you really not remember?"

_What the fuck did that mean?_ He'd been there, right there in the blood and the pain. He remembered everything. He couldn't _forget_ anything. "I lived it, Cas. Okay? I know what happened."

"No," the angel said quietly. "No, you think you know. You remembered it the way you needed to."

Inside, the walls bulged and stretched. He stepped closer to the angel, staring at him. "Look, I don't need to feel like hell for failing you, okay?"

Faces and moments, words and death and tears wove together and his chest was held by bands of iron, as the memories that had been covered over pulled free. "For failing you like I've failed every other godforsaken thing that I care about! I don't need it!"

"Dean. Just look at it," Castiel said, reaching out to touch his forehead. Dean flinched but didn't move away. "Really look at it."

_It won't be that easy. No. Not easy to forget. Impossible to forgive. Cas' face, in the forest, the uneasiness in his eyes as he'd looked at him. The blazing white light blotted out by the darkness. What I did, Dean. What I did. Dean, you have to go – now. Not don't leave me. He shook his head. No. I'm not leaving. I'm coming back. Leave – now! NO!_

The angel lifted his head away and Dean opened his eyes, blinking as he registered the cracked concrete he stood on. He looked at Castiel.

"Nothing you could have done would have saved me, because I didn't want to be saved."

The two memories, the distortion and the real event overlaid each other in his mind. "What the hell are you talking about?"

And Castiel felt.

Shame. Pain. Guilt. Fear. _Emotion _… it filled his vessel and he suddenly couldn't breathe properly. "It's where I belonged. I needed to do penance," Cas said, hearing the tremble in his voice, feeling how hard it was to get the words out. He drew in a long breath. "After the things I did on Earth and in Heaven, I didn't deserve to be out. And I saw that clearly when I was there."

He looked away. "I ... I planned to stay all along. I just didn't know how to tell you," he admitted regretfully. He could see now that he should've told Dean. He'd known that his friend would carry the weight of the world if he could. "You can't save everyone, my friend ... though you try."

Dean felt the load rise and his armour thinned out to nothing–

"Hey."

He turned, blinking as he tried to force down everything that wanted to break free. He didn't know what to think of the angel's confession. Didn't know what to think about any of it. He felt. That was all.

"Everything okay?" Sam asked, looking from his brother to the angel.

Castiel glanced at him, looking back at Dean. "Yeah. Just, uh... setting a few things straight."

"Good. Garth is gonna lay low with the Tra –"

* * *

Castiel stood in a pale, modern office, the surfaces polished metal and smoothed stone, neutral shades, sand and silver, white and grey, glass everywhere, reflecting, reflections.

"Hello, Castiel," the woman said, her voice low and soothing.

He turned slowly and saw a woman sitting behind a glass-topped desk, immaculate, sterile. Not a hair out of place. No emotion in sight. He felt … he felt.

"Where am I?" Cas asked, looking at the frosted glass windows that covered one wall.

"You don't know?" she seemed surprised. _Subdued surprise_, he thought. "You're home, Castiel."

"Heaven? I've never been here before." He looked around the office, searching for anything that might feel familiar, known. There was nothing.

"Not many have. My name is Naomi. We rescued you."

_Ah,_ he thought. "Purgatory."

"An incursion of angels, which cost us many lives," Naomi agreed coolly. "Lives that could be ill be spared. Consider these discussions your repayment of that debt."

His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her. "I don't understand."

"Tell me about Sam and Dean."

"The Prophet is being kept safe. The tablet has split in two and the Winchesters are trying to recover the missing piece." He felt the words spilling from him without volition, without thought. The woman was listening intently to him, the faintest hint of a crease in her skin suggesting that her concentration was absolute.

"Why am I telling you any of this?"

She looked up at him. "It's not your concern. Help the Winchesters. Come when they call. You will report in to me regularly, and you will never remember having done so."

"No," Cas said slowly. "I won't do that."

He didn't know what was going on, but memory tampering had always been a crime in Heaven. The seraphim lived on infinitely and memory was history, of Heaven, of the worlds in their care.

Naomi smiled. "Now, as you were," she said softly. "They won't even notice you were gone."

* * *

"...track down the other piece," Sam turned to look at the angel. "You're with us on this one, right, Cas?"

Castiel looked down. He felt as if he'd just dropped out for several seconds. Or minutes. There was a distinct hole where there should have been memory.

"Cas, you okay?" Sam looked at him worriedly.

"I'm – I'm fine," he said. It was what Dean always said. Whether he was or not. It was appropriate right now. He looked up at Sam. "And, yes, I'm with you –"

He looked at Dean, remembering suddenly what they'd just been speaking of. "If that's all right?"

Dean nodded slowly. He needed time, he thought. A lot of time. Without anyone else around. Time to understand.

Castiel walked between them, going to the rear door of the car. He didn't understand how he could've missed what seemed like … how long? He wasn't sure. Not long enough for either man to have really noticed. What had happened? In his mind, he could see reflections. But that was all. Reflections and light.

"It is, right?" Sam looked at him. "You two are good?"

Dean looked at the ground. Were they? He supposed they were. He wasn't but he didn't hold that against the angel. "Yeah."

He pulled in a breath and looked at his brother, digging the keys from his pocket. "Yeah, it's okay. Where're we going?"

"To be on the safe side, probably the opposite direction from the Trans," Sam said dryly, as they split up and took either side of the car, heading for the doors. "Crowley's going to be pissed and we're easier to track than they are."

"We need more hex bags," Dean leaned on the roof and looked at his brother.

"Yeah, and a few other things," Sam agreed, raising a brow at him. "We're only a few hours from Pine Bluff."

Dean considered it. A night or two of peace and quiet, restock their supplies. Hannah's cooking. He could deal with that. He nodded and opened his door, sliding in behind the wheel. Sam smiled and opened his door, manoeuvring himself into the other side.

* * *

_**US-63, Iowa**_

_It's not about fault. Nothing you could have done could have saved me. You can't save everyone. _

The angel's words kept looping through his mind, and every time he heard them again, the weight lifted.

Was he – had he been – so screwed up that he'd taken the blame for something and changed his memories to make that fit? That thought scared him more than anything else. What else? What else had he done that with? Everything? Everyone else? Were the memories of his whole life cock-eyed the same way?

He shook his head slightly, staring at the rain-slicked road, visible in snapshots between the silvery gleam of the water streaming down and the steady motion of the wipers as they cleared it. Next to him, Sam's soft snores were in time with the beat of the wipers.

Even if he had … done that. Even if he was carrying loads he shouldn't be … it was too big. Too big to handle looking at. How could he sort through the memories of a lifetime now?

_Have you got that low of an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head?_ It wasn't your fault. You should forgive yourself. _You all lie to yourselves, Dean, 'cause like you said, deep down, you're all scared. Stop lying to yourself, Dean._ It's not blame that falls on you, Dean, it's fate. _Apocalypse or no apocalypse ... monsters or no monsters, that's a crushing weight to have on your shoulders. To feel like six billion lives depend on you ... God ... how do you get up in the morning?_ You're white-knuckling it living like this. Like what you are is some bad, awful thing. But you're not. _You carry all kinds of crap you don't have to, Dean …_

He moaned very softly, rubbing his hand over his face as memories poured through him, unchecked, a flood that he couldn't control, couldn't face. He couldn't work out if they were important or not. Would it change anything? Really? Would he feel free? It couldn't change what he'd done. Those things he couldn't look at it.

His gaze flicked to the rear view mirror, the angel sitting straight in the back seat, his eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the windows.

Cas had needed penance. Maybe he needed it too. Some way to atone for what he'd done. To pay for it. So that he could let the things that he wasn't responsible for go.


	16. Chapter 16 Sufferin' Succotash

**Chapter 16 Sufferin' Succotash**

* * *

_**Pine Bluff, Arkansas**_

Twilight surrounded him like soft gauze, painting the landscape in shades of lavender, of mauve and grey and blue. Beyond the rock he was sitting on, the land sloped very gently down to a curving river, the banks lined with trees, shadows spreading out from them as the light died in the western sky.

There'd been no cool colours in Hell, he remembered uneasily. Nothing soothing to the eye or the mind. His nerves – his body – had not been present on that other plane, but his mind had held them, held the memory of them, of muscle and tendon, of bone and skin and flesh. He hadn't been able to escape from any of it.

Nothing he'd tried to bury had stayed down. Not in Purgatory, not up here. There wasn't enough alcohol in the world to shut it out either, he knew, the longing for the amnesia he'd once found in the bottle had gone. It didn't numb him anymore, instead it left him defenceless against the memories that came seeping out when he closed his eyes.

_Look at you. Gone and got your family killed. All alone in the world._

You're not strong enough.

_That's one deep, dark nothing you got there, Dean. You're not hungry, because inside, you're already ... dead._

I never loved you. You were my burden. I was shackled to you. Look what it got me.

_Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed? Mommy. Daddy. Even Sam. You ever ask yourself why? Maybe it's not them. Maybe, it's you._

You can't kill the Devil, and you're losing faith, in yourself, your brother.

_Don't you think that your brother dragged you back into that catastrophic mess because he'd rather damn you with him than be alone?_

I just ... you know, I feel like I did a lot of stuff I should have felt bad for, and then I paid a lot of dues and came out the other side, you know?

Dean looked at the first star, bright against the dim horizon. _Paid a lot of dues_. Sam had, he'd gone into the cage holding tight to the devil to save the world. What'd he done? Hadn't he paid enough? Hadn't he tried hard enough? When was it was going to be enough for him to feel like the past was the past and he didn't have to keep paying, every day, every minute, every second?

In the back of his mind, he knew the answer. Sam had only ever acted out of arrogance, or ignorance. Nothing he'd done had been coldly, deliberately, evil. Sam'd been dumb in that way, despite his smarts, young and dumb. But that was all.

In Hell's depths, he'd been more than that. Had known what he was doing. Had felt something he couldn't get rid of, couldn't undo, couldn't atone for. He could spend the rest of his life saving people and God might well send him to Heaven when he died, but he would never feel that he deserved that. Would never feel clean again.

He got up slowly, and walked back in the darkness, his feet finding the way as he stared at the lights of the sprawling single-storey ahead of him.

* * *

"There you are," Sam said, opening the front door as Dean pulled off his boots and left them on the porch. "What've you been doing?"

"Nothing," Dean said, walking past him. "Just, uh, thinking about what else we need."

"Dinner's ready." Sam closed the door and followed him down the hall. "And Colin brought the rest of the stuff we need."

"Good."

He walked into the kitchen, assailed by a mix of appetising scents, and went to the sink, washing his hands. On the long table, deep dishes of lasagne, a basket of fresh bread and several bowls of vegetables, roasted and grilled, had been spread out.

"Sit down, if you're leaving tomorrow, then you'll need something substantial to go on with," Hannah said, looking at him pointedly. In her early forties, she looked more like her mother, dark-haired, olive-skinned, voluptuous and warm and welcoming, than her Irish father. At one time, he'd had a huge crush on her, he remembered with a feeling that was almost amusement.

At one end of the table, Colin looked up as Dean took a seat at the table. "Got everything on the list, you're all stocked up again."

Dean nodded. "Thanks. You heard from anyone else in the last few months?"

Hannah frowned as she finished ladling the food onto their plates and sat down beside her husband. "Just rumours, really. Demon activity all over the place. A sudden decrease in the shifter population –"

Colin nodded. "And an increase in the vampires around," he added, looking from Dean to Sam. "You know what's going on?"

The brothers exchanged a discreet glance.

"Not really," Sam said, helping himself to bread.

Dean shook his head. "You knew some of the Alphas were killed, year before last?"

"Yeah, heard that the demons were doing that?" Colin said, fork paused in mid-air. "Was that right?"

"Yeah," Dean tucked his food into his cheek as he looked at the older man. "But that's mostly finished with at the moment. The populations shouldn't change much anymore."

"You boys always know far too much of what's happening, and tell us far too little." Hannah looked at him narrowly.

"Not this time," Dean said quietly. "We …" He looked at Sam for a moment. "We're in the dark about pretty much everything."

It was reasonably close to the truth, he thought. What Crowley would do next, what Kevin would discover on the tablet, those were unknowns. And so far as the monsters were concerned, they had no idea of what would happen with the populations.

The last day and two nights had been peaceful. The small motel the couple ran, an adjunct to their real business, was only half-full and they'd spent the time catching up on news, cleaning their weapons, looking over what they had in the trunk and replacing everything that had needed replacing or restocking. Cas had muttered something about visiting an old friend an hour after they'd arrived, and had vanished. He wasn't sure if the angel would return or not. He'd been relieved that he'd gone. Relieved to have some time to think about everything, even if he hadn't made much progress on getting it clear. He wasn't sure how the angel was finding them, since so far as he knew his ribs were still angel-etched with the Enochian symbols, but he hadn't had a problem before so perhaps he had some method.

He took a piece of bread from the basket and mopped up the last of the rich sauce from his plate with it. Tomorrow they'd head north again. Check that the Trans had made it safely to Garth and his safe-house. Start trying to figure out how to get the second half of the tablet out of Crowley's hands and back to Kevin.

* * *

_**Farmington, Missouri**_

Dean pulled into the gas station and pulled up beside the pump. He tossed Sam the keys and walked over to the store.

Sam pulled out the pump nozzle and opened the gas tank cap, his head snapping around as he heard a rustle of wings, and saw Castiel standing beside the front of the car.

"Where've you been?"

"Looking at the world," the angel answered, leaning against the quarter panel and opening the newspaper that he held. The trill of his phone stopped Sam from asking anything else. He pulled the phone from his pocket.

"Yeah?" Sam leaned against the trunk as he watched the numbers clicking over in the glass display on the pump. "Oh, hey."

* * *

Inside the store, Dean walked down the short aisles, looking at the food. Their brief layover had included home-cooked everything. His taste buds refused to consider the junk food in front of him as a reasonable substitute. He went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. It was nine o'clock in the morning, but that had become kind of meaningless as well. He headed back to the counter.

* * *

"Right, yeah," Sam said, the cell tucked against his ear. "No, just, uh – just call us whenever you find something." He looked up as Dean crossed the driveway to the pumps. "Yeah. Yeah, course. Right. No, I – I, uh ...," he said, looking at his brother as Dean opened the beers and passed one to him. "Yeah, hey, you know what? Uh, Dean's here. He really wants to talk to you."

He passed the phone to Dean, ignoring his brother's expression and shrugging.

"Mrs Tran, yeah, hi, uh ..." Dean hung up and tossed the cell back to Sam. "Tunnel. What's going on in Tran-land?"

Sam straightened up, swallowing a mouthful of beer. "Well, uh, Garth finally got them to his houseboat, but Kevin's having a lot of trouble reading their half of the tablet. So far, bits and pieces. Nothing about boarding up Hell."

"Garth has a safe-house_boat_?" Dean's brows rose.

Sam smiled wryly. "Dude, I don't even ask questions anymore."

Sam crouched, unhooking the nozzle and replacing it on the pump.

Dean walked up to the angel. "What's the word, Cas?"

Castiel glanced up and back at the newspaper he was reading. "It's a shortened version of my name."

"Yes, it is," Dean said mildly. Conversations like this didn't make anything any easier, he thought, fishing around for some patience. "I meant what's the word on the Word? Any, uh, tablet chatter on angel radio?"

"Oh. I couldn't say. I turned that off."

From the rear of the car Sam looked at him, brow creasing. "You can do that?"

"Yes, it's a simple matter of blocking out certain subsonic frequencies," the angel said shortly, folding the paper and turning to him. "I could draw you a diagram if you want."

Dean looked down and sighed. "No, that's – we're good." He nodded.

"Why'd you flip the switch?"

Castiel straightened. "Because it's a direct link to Heaven," he said quietly. "And I don't want anything to do with that place – not anymore."

"So … what now?" Dean asked. An angel who didn't want anything to do with Heaven. It was no crazier than anything else he'd heard or seen, of course. Just … what did an angel do if he wasn't tied to Heaven? He wasn't sure of Cas' saleable skills. "Move to Vermont? Open up a B&B?"

"No," Cas said. "I still want – I still need to help people." He looked at Dean. "I want to help you," he added, glancing past Dean to Sam. "Both of you. I want to do what you do."

Sam's face screwed up disbelievingly. "Really?"

"Yes." He looked back at Dean. "I could be your third wheel."

"You know that's not a good thing, right?"

"Of course it is," the angel said bracingly. "A third wheel adds extra grip, greater stability. I even found a case." He lifted the paper. "Oklahoma City – a man's heart jumped ten feet out of his chest."

He looked at them quizzically. "It sounds like our kind of thing, right?"

"He might have a point," Sam said, walking up behind Dean.

"Excellent," Cas said, turning and walking away. "I'll see you there."

Dean shook his head. "Wait, Cas. Cas!"

The angel stopped.

"If you want to play cowboys and bloodsuckers, that's fine," Dean said as Castiel turned back to him. "But you're gonna stick with us, okay? None of this zapping around crap. Capiche?"

"Yeah, I capiche." Castiel looked away.

"All right, then." Dean walked around the car to the driver's side.

"Can I, uh, at least ride in the front seat?" The angel walked to the door, looking at the passenger seat.

Sam lengthened his stride to reach the passenger door and open it as his brother opened the driver's door.

"No." The word was delivered in stereo from both sides of the car. Castiel watched them get in and walked slowly to the rear door.

* * *

_**Oklahoma City, Oklahoma**_

The morgue was a crowded room in the coroner's office, drawn blinds and spot-lighting shadowing much of it. Dean stood with Castiel on one side of the metal table, Sam on the other side, listening to the detective who was handling the case. Between them, the body of Gary Freleng lay, a cloth covering him to the neck.

"Coroner said his heart was ejected from his body," Detective Grosvenor looked at Sam. "Got some air, too. Found it in a sandbox."

"Any idea what happened, Detective?" Sam asked her, leaning on the side of the table.

The woman shrugged slightly. "A lot of people are thinking drugs, Agent Nash – an assload of drugs."

"There are no narcotics in that man's system," Cas muttered softly to Dean. "His molecules are all wrong."

Sam saw the detective glance over at the angel, and raised his voice. "Tox screens should rule that in or out."

The detective nodded dryly. "When they get back."

"Never seen an eightball do that," she added, looking down at the body. She pulled back the cloth and Sam's eyes narrowed as he took in the heart-shaped hole in the middle of the man's chest, where his heart should have been. He leaned close. The ribs hadn't been bent back, they were just gone. Likewise, the arteries and veins hadn't been torn, the edges were neatly sliced through.

"And who called this in?" Sam looked up the detective.

"Friend of his. Name of Olivia Kopple. She saw the whole thing," she said, rolling her eyes as she pulled the cloth back up the chest. Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket, looking at the caller.

"Oh. Ah, crap. I have – I have to take this. Here's everything we got," she said, handing Sam a slim file. "Knock yourself out."

Sam took the file and opened it. "Thanks."

"Listen, you see anything weird, anything out of the box, you give us a call," Dean said, pulling a card from his pocket and handing it to the detective as she passed him. She looked down at the card.

"Whatever you say," she said, lifting her phone. "Detective Grosvenor. Right. On my way."

Castiel moved around the table slowly. "I can't sense any EMF or sulphur. Mr. Freleng's arterial health is, uh, excellent."

He leaned over the body and sniffed delicately. "Mmm. He did recently suffer from a ... mild, uh ... what is that? ... bladder infection."

Dean looked around uncomfortably. "Cas, stop smelling the dead guy."

The angel frowned at him. "Why? Now I know everything about this man. So we can –"

Sam looked down at the file in his hands. "Do you know he was having an affair?"

"What?"

Dean's mouth tucked in. "Strike one, Sherlock."

"According to Olivia, they would meet at the park every Thursday at twelve-forty-five, walk to the Moonlight diner, where she always ordered a Caesar salad, dressing on the side. They would chat about everything, and she'd be back on the road by one-thirty.

"You don't think she's telling the truth?" Castiel asked, watching a grimace flicker over Dean's face as he listened to his brother.

Dean looked at him. "Too much detail. Bad liars always add too much detail."

Sam nodded. "And he would know." He ignored the look Dean gave him and continued. "Plus, we drove past the Moonlight diner on the way into town. It's attached to the Moonlight motel."

Dean looked down at the body. "Okay, well, let's say that, uh, Gary here's on the prowl, but he's playing it safe because ..."

He lifted the man's left hand out from under the cloth. The overhead light gleamed on the gold wedding band on Gary's ring finger. "... dude's married."

He dropped the hand, looking at the angel. "Doesn't want anyone to see his ride parked out in front of a by-the-hour fleabag."

Sam nodded. "So he stashes his car at the park across the street, meets Olivia there."

Castiel's gaze shifted back and forth from Dean to Sam as they added their thoughts, building a scenario.

"His wife probably found out about it, and it broke her heart," Dean said, looking down at the table.

"So she breaks his," Sam said softly. He looked at his brother. "Sounds witchy."

"Yes, it does," Dean looked at Freleng. "Guy was living a lie, and it came back to bite him in the ticker."

He walked behind the angel. "But nice job on the bladder infection."

Sam looked after him, his mouth lifting on one side. Castiel turned to look at him.

"I … uh … you seemed to understand this … process … very quickly," he said uncomfortably.

"Been doing this a long time, Cas." Sam closed the file and followed Dean out. "That's all."

* * *

_**South Jackson Street, Oklahoma City**_

Dean pulled up and gestured to the two cars in the driveway. "Cas, any hex bags in those?"

Castiel got out of the car and looked at them. "No."

"Alright, Sam, you take the wife, and we'll look over the house?"

"Yep."

They walked up the path to the front door and Sam knocked, pulling out his badge. Dean elbowed Castiel as he pulled out his. Cas looked at him then at the badge, and reached into his jacket pocket for the hastily made up badge Dean had given him that morning.

The door opened and a woman stood there, long, dark brown hair brushed back from her forehead, slim in a figure-hugging black dress, hose and heels. Debra Freleng looked at them politely. "Can I help you?"

"Ma'am, Special Agent Nash, FBI. These are my colleagues, Special Agent Crosby and Agent Young. We'd like to ask you some questions about the death of your husband, a, uh, Mr Gary Freleng?" Sam said, his expression compassionate, his voice soft.

Behind him, Dean repressed a smile. That was the old Sam, oozing all the gentle and irresistible charm of a wounded puppy.

Debra looked at them. "I – I don't understand."

"There are some suspicious circumstances surrounding your husband's death, Mrs Freleng, that we –" Castiel said, leaning past Dean.

"Suspicious?" She looked at him. "He died of a heart attack."

"May we come in, ma'am?" Sam shot a warning look at Cas and turned back to her with a smile. "It won't take long, we just have some questions."

"Uh, yes, of course," she said, stepping back and opening the door wide. Sam walked into the wide hallway and Dean pushed Castiel forward ungently, closing the door behind him as Mrs Freleng walked past them and into the dining room.

"Have a seat, Mrs Freleng," Sam said, glancing back at Dean.

"Bathroom," Dean muttered to Cas. The angel looked at him blankly. Dean sighed.

"Uh, ma'am, could I use your restroom?" he said, looking at her. She nodded.

"Down the hall, third door on the right."

Castiel watched him leave the room. "Uh, may I also use your facilities?"

She looked at him, one brow lifting very slightly. "There's a bathroom upstairs. Second door on the left."

He walked out and Sam breathed a small sigh of relief. "While I can't divulge the exact nature of the evidence we've found, we're concerned that your husband's death may not have been as straightforward as it seemed, Mrs Freleng."

"What?"

"Could Mr Freleng have been keeping secrets from you? Perhaps involved in something you had no knowledge of?"

* * *

Dean heard Castiel's feet thumping up the stairs and his brother's voice murmuring from the dining room. He checked the rooms along the hallway, looking under the furniture and in every cupboard and drawer, feeling along the walls for any sign of a false panel. The house wasn't old, and the Frelengs didn't have a lot of clutter. He turned back down the hall as Castiel came down the stairs.

"Anything?"

The angel shook his head. "The house is clean."

They both stopped and turned at the soft knock on the front door as they returned to the dining room. Mrs Freleng rose from her chair, and walked past them as the front door opened.

"Deb?"

A tall, slender blonde woman came down the hall, holding a casserole dish, her eyes reddened but her face carefully made up. She stopped as she saw them, her gaze cutting to Debra Freleng involuntarily, her face screwing up as a fresh wave of grief overtook her.

"Olivia," Debra said, walking quickly to her, arms extended. They hugged, the younger woman's shoulders shaking, the lid of the casserole dish rattling.

Dean blinked, and looked at Sam. "As in _…_ _mistress … _Olivia?"

Castiel looked at the two women. "This is awkward."

Debra pulled back slightly, wiping the tears from Olivia's cheeks lightly with her thumb. She slipped her arm around her, and looked at Sam. "I'm sorry. W-what did you think Gary was keeping a secret?"

Dean looked at the floor uncomfortably. Sam glanced at the opposite wall. Castiel looked at her directly.

"That he was sleeping with her," he said bluntly, glancing at Olivia.

Sam's head snapped around to look at the angel and Dean mirrored the look a half-second later.

Debra looked at Olivia then back at the angel. "I know."

"You know?" Sam asked.

"Gary and I – we ..." She looked at Olivia briefly. "Had an arrangement. He was seeing Olivia, and I was spending some time with our neighbour, P.J," she finished, her tone slightly apologetic.

Olivia looked at the dumbstruck faces of the three men. "I'll, uh – I'll put this in the kitchen."

"I'll help." Debra followed her out.

Dean and Sam exchanged a glance. "Nothing to suggest anything in here."

"So she's not a witch," Castiel said softly, brows drawn together in thought.

"No." Sam ran his hand through his hair.

"Then what killed her husband?" Cas looked at Dean questioningly.

"Excellent question," Dean said, looking at the doorway the two women had disappeared through. "And why was he killed?"

* * *

_**West California Avenue, Oklahoma City**_

The building was twelve stories, no protuberances, no ledges, no nothing, just a straight drop to the street below. Sam looked down at the area directly under him, marked off with yellow crime scene tape, the car the vic had landed on still a crushed heap in the centre.

He turned away from the edge and walked back to Detective Grosvenor and his brother. "Looks like suicide."

"It was," the detective agreed immediately. "Guy left a note. He invested everything in Roman Industries and lost it all when they crashed and burned last year."

Dean looked at her. "So why call us?"

Detective Grosvenor looked away, mouth twisting into a small, wry smile. "Because I have two witnesses who swear that Madoff floated in mid-air for a good ten seconds, _then_ he looked down, and splat," she said slowly, and looked back at him. "Not sure I buy that, you understand, but the way they're talking, it sounds like something straight out of a –"

Dean's eyes narrowed as he visualised it. "Cartoon."

"You said you wanted weird," she said with a shrug, turning away as a crime technician called out to her.

Dean nodded. "Thanks."

He looked at Sam. "She's right, you know. I mean, the whole heart jumping out of the guy's chest, the– the delayed fall – that's straight-up Bugs Bunny."

Castiel looked at him, frowning. "So we're looking for some sort of insect-rabbit hybrid?"

"No, we're not, Cas," Sam said patiently. "Bugs is a cartoon character, like, uh – like Woody Woodpecker or Daffy Duck."

Dean looked at the angel's uncomprehending expression. "They're little animated movies. You know, uh, the coyote chases the roadrunner, and then, uh, the anvil gets dropped on his head."

Castiel watched the memory of the film bring a hint of laughter to Dean's face. "Is it supposed to be funny?"

"No," Dean said, his expression becoming stony as he looked at him. "It's hilarious."

Sam sighed, looking back at the edge of the building. "Also … impossible."

* * *

Dean stared at the pages in front of him, feeling a low-grade throbbing at the base of his skull. _Not one thing. Not one_. He closed his eyes, hearing the soft click of the laptop's keys on the other side of the table, and beyond that, the quiet drone of the television as the angel attempted to catch up on the rules and requirements of 'toons. His dreams would be backed by the Loony Tunes soundtrack tonight, he could feel it.

"Stay tuned, kids! We'll be right back!"

Castiel turned the television off, laughing softly. "I understand."

He looked at Dean. "The bird represents God. And coyote is man, endlessly chasing the divine, yet never able to catch him. It's ... it's hilarious."

The brothers exchanged a look, Dean rolling his eyes, Sam's mouth quirking as he looked down at the screen in front of him. Every day with the angel was like a cartoon, Dean thought tiredly. He looked down at the book on the table, leaning back.

"I got no idea what we're hunting," he said, rubbing the corner of his eye absently as he looked at the pages. "Maybe it's a Tulpa. Maybe it's some – some crazy god who watched too much Robot Chicken. I–I mean, is there a link between 'Heartbreak Hotel' and 'Free Fallin''?"

Sam stared at the screen. "Not that I can find."

"All right, well, I'm gonna call it," he said, closing the journal and leaving it on the book underneath. He looked over at the angel. "Cas, you gonna book a room or what?"

"No, I'll stay here," Cas said, looking through Dean's small leather bathroom bag, toothpaste and brush in one hand as he rummaged with the other.

Dean registered what the angel was doing vaguely, too tired to care. He wanted to sleep. He could ignore his brother, but the angel being around was like having a permanent, annoying house guest. "Oh, okay. Yeah. We'll have a slumber party, braid Sam's hair. Where are you gonna sleep?"

"I don't sleep," Castiel looked at him.

"Okay, well, I need my four hours, so ..." He left the sentence hanging, hoping he wasn't going to have to actually kick the angel out.

"I'll watch over you."

God.

_No._

No, no, no. "That's not gonna happen."

Cas stood up, his fingers pressed lightly against his temple, his face drawn in concentration. "Something's coming across the police band."

Sam's brows shot up. "You can hear that?"

"It's all waves," Cas said distractedly. "A bank has been robbed. It sounds loony."

Dean looked at him narrowly. "Define 'loony'."

"The police sound … very confused," Castiel looked over at him. "It seems to be another cartoon-related death."

"Great," Dean got up. "Fine. Saddle up."

* * *

_**Downtown Business District, Oklahoma City**_

The bank lobby was quiet, dignified, polished dark wood and neutral wall shades and subdued lighting. It gave the impression of solidity, Dean thought absently, looking around. A safe place to leave your money and valuables. He glanced back at the floor. Well … except for that.

"That's loony, all right," Sam said quietly, staring down at the enormous anvil that sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by bright red gore.

Detective Grosvenor came in through the double doors at the end of the lobby. "Agents. I was just about to give you a call," she said, looking down at the anvil. "Got to ask – do you boys chase the crazy, or does the crazy chase you?"

"Depends on the day," Sam muttered, following her gaze.

Dean snorted. "Who's the pancake?"

"Security guard," Grosvenor said. "He called in reporting a robbery, but by the time we got here –"

Sam cut her off. "A robbery?"

She nodded. "Looks like Calvin Q was trying to jimmy open a safe-deposit box when the guard found him." She gestured to the wall behind the counter. A perfectly round, flat black circle was painted on it, lit as a technician took photographs of it from several angles. "And, well ... you know how that story ends."

Castiel frowned at her. "Calvin Q?"

Grosvenor smiled wryly. "As in Calvin Q Calculus."

"Another cartoon character," Dean muttered to the angel. "He invented a portable hole." He waved his hand vaguely at the circle.

"One of the beat cops brought it up on the first robbery, and well, that's we call the burglar," Grosvenor added. "Started working the area about six months ago."

She looked at Dean. "This guy, he not a pro – at least, not in the conventional sense. But there're no fingerprints, never any sign of forced entry – just a pair of those every time, like he's signing his work." She shook her head and looked at the anvil again. "He's never done anything like this before, though."

"You mind if I take a look at your files on those other break-ins?" Sam asked the detective.

She shook her head. "Not a problem. I'm headed to the station now if you want a ride."

"That'd be great," he said, looking at Dean. His brother nodded.

Sam followed the detective out of the lobby and Dean looked at the anvil carefully.

"Cas. Can you lift this?"

The angel walked behind the anvil and eased it back, lifting one edge off the floor, and then the entire solid hunk of cast iron back and away. Beneath it, the guard's flattened clothing lifted up, adhered to the base of the anvil with the blood and flesh, and a large X was visible in the relatively clean area where the guard had been standing.

Dean looked down at it with a one-sided grin. "'X' marks the spot." He looked up at the unmarked ceiling. "Well, whoever's doing this is playing by cartoon rules."

"Animation doesn't have rules," Castiel said, looking up as well.

"Sure it does," Dean contradicted him sharply, memories of a million cartoons, watched in a thousand motel rooms, filling his mind's eye. Falling was never fatal, only painful and shape-altering. Anything could come to life – and usually did. Dynamite, bombs and of course, anvils, were marked clearly. "In Toontown, a – a pretty girl can make your heart leap out of your chest, anvils fall from the sky, and," he continued, gesturing at the flat black circles painted on the walls. "- if you draw a door or a black hole on the wall, you can stroll right through it."

He walked to the circle painted on the wall next to the bank's vault, Cas following him.

"So this is how the thief got in," the angel said, looking down at the circle.

"And out," Dean nodded, looking at the one on the other side of the lobby. "And cracked the vault."

Castiel put his hand on the circle, then knocked at it. "Then why isn't it working now?"

Dean looked around. "I got no clue."

The angel looked at him. "Sam is right. This is impossible. It defies the laws of this world."

"All cartoons defy the laws of physics; they're exaggerations, straight imagination. They have their own rules, but not … the same ones as real life has." Dean smiled humourlessly at him. And they were confined to the mind of the cartoonist, he thought slowly, and then to the two-dimensional world of television. So how the hell could someone be doing this?

"C'mon," he said to Cas. "I need to look some stuff up."

* * *

Sam hadn't returned to the room when they got back, and Dean pulled off his jacket and loosened his tie, opening the laptop and waiting for it to load. Looking at the fridge regretfully, he turned to the counter instead, spooning coffee into the filter and filling the jug. It was almost morning and it didn't look like he was going to get any sleep tonight anyway.

The laptop beeped softly and he leaned on the edge of the table, typing in a search command and hitting enter, glancing sideways at the angel who was sitting on his bed, looking through his father's journal. For a second, he felt a strong urge to grab the book out of Cas' hands, a feeling of possessive anger, mixed up with shame and guilt. Then it was gone. If the angel really wanted to be a hunter, he thought wearily, he might as well learn about it from the best.

The pot bubbled in the kitchen and he straightened up, going to get a cup from the cupboard and pouring out the strong, black liquid. It was the only thing that was going to keep him going.

He returned to the table and sat down, reading through the listings the search had returned as he sipped the hot coffee.

"Your father ... he had beautiful handwriting," Cas said quietly from the bed a few moments later. Dean looked at him, seeing him no longer reading, just turning the pages.

"How you doing, Cas?" he asked. The angel looked … adrift, he thought.

"I'm fine," Castiel replied, glancing at him and back to the book in his hands.

Angel'd spent way too much time with him and Sam, he thought ruefully. "Well, I just – I – I know that when... I got puked out of Purgatory, it took me a few weeks to... find some kind of … perspective."

"I'm fine." The angel repeated, an faint edge to the words this time, his gaze on the pages he was turning.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm – I'm happy you're back. I'm – I'm freaking thrilled," Dean said a little more carefully. "It's just this whole mysterious-resurrection thing – it always has one mother of a downside."

Castiel looked at him, closing the journal with a slight snap. "So, what do you want me to do?"

"Maybe take a trip upstairs?"

"To Heaven?" Cas frowned.

Dean shrugged. "Yeah, poke around, see if the God squad can't tell us how you got out."

"No." Castiel looked down at the journal.

Dean exhaled, looking down. He got that Cas didn't want to go back. He didn't know why, exactly, but he got it. It didn't change the fact that they needed the intel. They needed to know what was coming before it took a large and bloody chunk out of them.

"Look, man, I–I hate those flying-ass monkeys just as much as you do, but –"

"Dean! I said no!" Cas ground out, not looking at him, not looking at anything.

Dean heard the undertone. It'd been fear, lacing the angel's voice. He looked at Cas, and saw it in the jump of the muscle at the point of the angel's jaw, in the pulse that was beating too fast at the side of the angel's neck as he turned away. Dean turned back to the laptop and shut the lid, getting up and walking to the other bed. Sitting down next to Castiel, he met the angel's eyes directly.

"Talk to me."

Castiel put the journal down beside him. "Dean, I ..."

Dean watched him draw in a breath, shifting on the side of the other bed to face him. "When I – when I had the Leviathan – inside – all the souls from Purgatory –," he hesitated, unsure of how to explain what had happened to him, to explain how it had happened. "When we call on the souls of Heaven, to-to power us, that power, it's just borrowed. It fills us with love and light and it leaves no stain," he said slowly. "But it's never more than we can stand, never more than we can handle." He looked at his friend, unsure if Dean would understand.

Dean nodded, seeing it in his mind's eye, remembering the times he'd seen the angel aglow with that power.

"The souls from – there were too many, and they weren't love, they weren't light, they were everything – stained and bludgeoned and distorted – and I …" He looked down at his hands, clasped together on his lap. "It wasn't their fault, but it was too much for me. I had … already … felt hubris, Dean. In choosing you, in choosing to help you and your brother, I had already opened myself to that sin." He looked at the man, then away. "I don't know if it was the Leviathan influencing me. I can't be sure of that. But I moved over the Earth and I-I killed, wantonly, believing that I was cleansing the Earth of evil, of evil-doers. And I caused suffering and pain."

Dean remained silent, remembering the news reports, the eye witness accounts.

"But in Heaven, Dean," Castiel said, his eyes wide as an expression of despair filled his face. "I devastated Heaven."

In memory, he saw again the open plains, blackened and burned and filled with broken angels, once-snowy wings rent and smashed and turned to ash, beings that had been filled with light and music and knowledge, dead and gone, smote with the unclean power of fifty million souls from the land of monsters.

"I executed thousands of my own kind," he said, looking up at Dean. "And I-I-I can't go back."

"'Cause if you do, the angels will kill you," Dean said softly.

Castiel's face smoothed out. "Because if I see what Heaven's become – what I –" He looked away, drawing in a deep breath. "What _I_ made of it ... I'm afraid I might kill myself."

Dean stared at him. _If Lucifer burns this mother down, and I coulda done something about it, guess what? That's on me._ He'd made the choice back then, to give up, because he'd known that if he hadn't, if the devil had gotten Sam and no one was there to stop him, he wouldn't've been able to live with himself afterwards. And what Cas had done, even if he could convince him that it hadn't been him, strictly speaking, had been worse, in its own way. You couldn't outrun that responsibility by saying you were high, saying it wasn't all you. Your body, your actions, your choices. That's where the buck stopped.

The door behind him opened and he heard his brother's clumping steps.

"Hey. Got something," Sam said as he walked in.

Cas looked at Dean for a moment longer, then past him. "Good."

He stood up and walked over to the table. "Excellent. What?"

Dean got up slowly and followed him, shunting his thoughts aside as he looked at Sam, at the expanding file his brother had placed on the table.

"This Calvin Q, the black-hole guy – before he tried the bank, he robbed a house, across from the park where Gary blew a gasket," Sam said without preamble.

"So, uh, what –?" Dean looked at him. "You think the house heist and Gary's corpse are connected?"

"According to the file, they happened at pretty much the exact same time," Sam said, opening the file and pulling out a map. "Here. Check this out. Okay." He spread the map over the table, tapping the circled marks where a grouping of 'x's' had been printed. "Here's the house, and Gary died across the street here. And that building from this morning – right there. The guy hit that, too."

"Let me guess – where, uh, what's his name took a swan dive," Dean said, raising a brow at his brother. Sam nodded. "All right. I'll bite. What about the others?"

"Well, those are the places that stuff got stolen. But nobody got dead. Take away the graffiti, and these all look like just normal smash-and-grabs," Sam said, pulling out another file. "But I made a few phone calls and talked to some people who were nearby – neighbours, store owners – and they reported a whole lot of crazy." His mouth twisted up wryly as he looked at his brother.

"Like?"

"Like a jogger bumping his head and sprouting a four-inch lump," Sam recounted. "And a kid walking into a wall and hearing birdies." He shrugged and looked at Cas. "Basically, for fifty yards around each robbery, people were living in a cartoon. But it didn't last long – I mean no more than five, ten minutes at each place."

"About the length of time it would take a thief to get in and out," Castiel said.

"Exactly," Sam agreed. "Whatever power Calvin Q is using, it's–it's not targeted. I mean, it's – it's kind of like a field effect, you know? Picture him in a – in a bubble of weird, and anything that touches it gets … daffy."

Dean looked at him sceptically. "So this Animaniac can step through walls, can toss an anvil?"

"Yeah," Sam said, brow creasing up as he looked at him. "But he's warping reality to do it. So if someone happens to be nearby meeting the girl of his dreams ..."

"His heart makes a break for it," Dean finished. "Okay, so smashing the, uh – the rent-a-cop – that – that was on purpose, but the rest of them – what, is that just collateral weird?"

"Yeah. Maybe. That's what it looks like," Sam said.

"So we're looking for a thief." Castiel looked at him. Sam nodded.

"And the deposit box he was after," he added, looking back down at the files. He pulled out another file and opened it. "Now, the house, the office – every place he's hit belonged to someone living at the Sunset Fields retirement home."

Dean looked at the file, then up at his brother. "You think our guy's there."

"It's walking and talking like a duck," Sam said dryly. "Worth a shot."

"Do we have any theories – at all – on how this is going down?" Dean looked at him curiously.

"Nope," Sam said. "It's not witchcraft. And it doesn't seem likely that a demon's involved – kind of low-key for them – and I can't think of anything else that has that kind of juice."

"No. All right. Well, let's gear up. It's wabbit season," Dean said, feeling a slight relief that at least it was a lead.

Sam smiled as he packed the files away. Castiel glanced at him.

"I don't think you pronounced that correctly," he murmured confidentially to Dean.

_Ah, and back to normal_, Dean thought. How'd the angel missed Fudd in his cartoon research?


	17. Chapter 17 A Visit to ACME

**Chapter 17 A Visit to ACME**

* * *

The Sunset Fields Retirement Home sat on a four-acre block in a suburban corridor, having neither a view of any sunset, nor of fields. Dean hoped it was a metaphor, because otherwise the residents had been gypped. He put the car in Park and pulled out the keys, looking at the smooth lawn, clipped shrubs and hedges, neat concrete paths. Final resting place of the non-supernatural kind of living dead, he thought, an involuntary shiver zipping down his spine. He was hoping he'd buy it on a job, long before he ever got close to a place like this.

He got out and looked over the car roof at his brother. "And the plan is?"

"Fishing trip," Sam said, closing the passenger door and walking around the front of the car. "Hope we catch something."

"That's nice and vague."

Sam shrugged and walked up the path to the front doors. He heard the rustle of the angel's coat as he walked up behind him.

* * *

The recreation room of the facility was large, and eerily quiet for the amount of people it held. Dean walked along the wall, looking at the men and women sitting at tables, some talking and still animated, others staring blankly ahead of them. The walls were painted a murky yellow and mostly covered by large pin boards, covered with flyers and photographs and, he glanced at one, peppy like self-help slogans that had the people living here still been able to understand them, would've driven to them to homicide within a week.

He dragged his attention back as a man in a grey suit approached them.

"Hello."

Dean opened his jacket, fishing for his badge. "Hi."

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah," he said, pulling out the ID and holding it up. "Agent Crosby. FBI."

"Sorry, I'm Dr. Dwight Mahoney. I run Sunset Fields," Dr Mahoney said, brushing his own identification self-consciously with his fingers.

"We need to question your residents," Castiel said.

"Well ... why?" he asked, looking around the room. "About what?"

"Grand larceny, mostly," Sam answered.

Mahoney's face twitched with a fleeting expression of disbelief. "Of course. Um, by all means, ask away. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know."

"Appreciate it," Sam said as the doctor walked past him, heading for his office.

"Great." Dean looked around the room. "All right, let's do this." He headed for the most aware person he could see. "No flirting, you two."

* * *

Mrs Sheila Tate sat at the table, staring moonily across it at Castiel. Dean, sitting between them, looked from the woman beside him to the photograph she'd handed him a minute ago. The woman in the picture was undoubtedly her, standing on the deck of a yacht under sail, her husband's arm wrapped around her, short, curly blonde hair picked up by the wind. About fifty years ago, Dean thought, his eyes focussing appreciatively on the long, slender legs and high, full breasts packaged in a sleeveless, low-cut top and short white shorts. This was exactly why he didn't want to be here, he thought. The chick'd been smoking when she was young. Now she couldn't even figure out who she was looking at.

"You are so pretty, Charles," she said on cue, staring at the angel. Dean looked at Castiel's uncomfortable expression for a moment, before movement behind him caught his attention. The girl walking briskly across the room was tall, with long, dark hair loose down her back and long, long legs. He watched her pass by and realised that in fifty years she could easily be as vacant as the woman he sat beside. Of course, he'd be pretty damned vacant by that time too.

"That's not my name," Cas pointed out in a low voice, glancing at Dean.

"Oh!" Sheila Tate smiled. "You look so much like my third husband."

Dean handed her back the photograph. "We're here to talk about the robbery, ma'am."

"Robbery?" She turned to look at him, her face perplexed.

"Mm-hmm," he said patiently. "The one the police talked to you about a few days ago?" He saw that that wasn't enough and elaborated. "Someone broke into your old house and, uh, stole a stack of bearer bonds and, uh, some jewellery that you stashed under your floorboards."

"Oh, my diamonds, yes. I hid them there," she said, nodding as memory returned. She looked back to Castiel apologetically. "I'm sorry, Charles. I didn't trust you. You were quite the bounder."

Dean's mouth curved up in amusement as he saw Cas' expression, the slightly hunted look in the angel's eyes.

"Did you tell anyone where your valuables were, Mrs. Tate?" Castiel asked firmly.

"I don't think so." She looked at him and rested her chin on her hand, her eyes becoming dreamy again. "But then I get a little fuzzy sometimes."

"Have you noticed anything strange lately – uh, cold spots, smells?" Dean tried again.

Sheila sat up a little, thinking about it. "Well…," she said slowly. "There's the cat." She pointed to the other side of the room.

"The cat?" Dean turned around. There was, at least, a cat. A large, fluffy, ginger tabby sitting on a bench being stroked by a resident, wearing that slightly superior expression that felines had perfected.

"He talks sometimes," Sheila said brightly to Castiel. "Really hates that mouse."

Dean looked at her. _Why not_, he thought.

"I'll interrogate the cat," Castiel said, getting up. Dean didn't argue.

* * *

Sam looked around. He'd checked for EMF, discreetly, done a search of the rooms and the common areas for anything that might indicate anything, and had found absolutely nothing. The place was vaguely depressing, despite the forced cheeriness of the décor and the staff. Everyone seemed to be moving in slow motion, as if they were trapped in molasses. He looked around the room. Close by an old man sat at a table, unmoving and staring vacantly ahead of him.

The orderly came up to the table, bending over to speak to the man. "You all done here, Stanley? All right."

He picked up the tray, its contents untouched and walked toward Sam. Sam straightened and focussed as the orderly stopped next to him.

"It's creepy, right? A lot of these people – like Stanley, there – they just tune out and live in their own heads. It's like maybe the real world is too much for them, and they just run and hide, you know?" the orderly said, looking back at the man.

"Hmm." _Stanley? _Sam looked at the old man. _What was too much for you, Stanley?_ He knew what'd been too much for him. Not the real world but a lack of a real world. No more family. No more duty. No more anything but emptiness and truth and pain as far as the eye could see. He knew why Dean wouldn't – couldn't – let him go. He'd been there too. In that howling wasteland. People hadn't seen him, not really. Hadn't been able to because most of him had already been gone.

Then one person had. And he'd held on.

_You got the look. The one a lot of guys get after they've been through the meat grinder – the one that lets you know they've seen a lot of crap they can't forget. The second their feet hit solid ground, they start running, and they don't stop – not till they find something to hold on to._

Stan Richardson's voice was in his mind. Amelia's father had just been protective, he knew, just been trying to look out for his little girl. _Yeah, I held on. We held on. When you lose everything, that's what you do. You hold on_. You hold onto someone who sees you, despite the fact that you're barely there.

"Hey, what do you got?" Dean walked up, a faint line creasing his forehead as he looked at his brother.

"Hey," Sam said, pushing his thoughts aside and dragging himself forcefully back. "Um, nothing. Uh, no hex bags, no EMF. You?"

Dean shook his head, looking around. "Nada. Half the folks I talked to don't even remember being robbed."

Sam looked at the pinboard beside him. Against the brightly-coloured paper background, a number of photographs were pinned up. His attention sharpened on one of them, memories of an older time pushing out the more recent ones.

"Dean, um ... you remember a guy named Fred Jones?" he asked, brow wrinkling as he tried to remember more. "I think he was a contact of Dad's, lived outside of Salt Lake?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, sure. Guy gave me my first beer. I don't even think I was double digits."

"Right, yeah. Me, too," Sam said quickly. He'd been eight, if he remembered that right. "Um, he was psychic, right?"

"More than that. He was psychokinetic plus a bunch of other stuff, Dad said. A bunch of really out-there stuff," Dean corrected him, remembering the pages in the journal that detailed some of the things Fred could do.

"Crap, that's right," Sam frowned as he remembered something else. It'd seemed like magic at the time. "He made me ice-cream, for my float."

Dean looked at him for a moment. "So?"

"Made it from nothing, Dean. From the air," Sam said, his mouth twisting up to one side slightly.

"Whoa. What made you think of Fred?"

"'Cause he's in room 114," Sam said, pointing to Fred's picture.

Dean looked at him for a moment, then turned to hiss at the angel. "Cas. Let's go."

Castiel stared at the cat a moment longer and glanced up at Dean. "I've almost cracked him."

"Now." Dean followed Sam down the hall.

"Hey," Cas warned the cat. "I'm not through with you."

He straightened up and followed the brothers down the hall.

* * *

Room 114 was a small room with a bed, a chest of drawers, a closet and a television set, screwed high up on wall. The walls were a bright salmon pink, the trim white. Dean flinched slightly as he walked in. In a wheelchair in the centre of the room, Fred Jones sat staring at the television.

"Mr. Jones?" Sam walked up to the chair. "Hey, it's, uh, Sam Winchester." He crouched down until he was at Fred's eye-level and looked at him. Fred didn't move, didn't blink.

Dean stood in front of the chair. The features were the same but that was all. He remembered the slightly bitter, bubbling taste of the beer filling his mouth, and his father talking to Fred, long into the night, him and Sam sleeping in camp beds on the screened-in porch, the whine of insects in the warm summer darkness. He remembered a tall man, sandy hair, warm eyes and a dry sense of humour, a dominant expression of amused watchfulness. All that had gone from the man sitting in front of him.

"Fred?"

He glanced up and behind him at the television blaring and switched it off, looking back down at the man in front of him.

"Fred! Hey!" He raised his voice, clapping twice loudly.

Sam looked at him and shook his head. Fred hadn't blinked, hadn't shown any response at all.

"So, you really think this one man is causing all of these ... pockets of unreality?"

Dean nodded absently. "Well, if he is, he'd be surrounded by a circle of crazy, right?" He looked around the room, spotting a heavy book on the cupboard behind him. "Hang on."

He picked up the book and held it in front of him, then slammed the cover into his head. Sam jumped slightly at the clanging noise the impact made, eyes widening as he heard the distinctive cartoon bird noises that such a hit invariably brought with it in every cartoon he'd ever seen. Dean shook his head and the birdsong disappeared.

"Bingo." He looked at his brother. Sam nodded, looking back down at Fred.

The angel frowned at him. "But how?"

"Fred's got juice. I mean, an average psychokinetic can move things with his mind, but a guy like Fred – he wasn't average," Sam said. In his mind's eye he saw the scoop of ice-cream forming in mid-air above his glass of beer, the air growing colder around them as Fred had concentrated on it. It'd been vanilla, that ice-cream, and when it was fully formed it'd dropped into the beer, steaming slightly as it'd melted. "I think Dad wrote something about him in the journal – Fred had – has, I guess – a whole bunch of … superpowers, including what he described as 'creativity'. When he got worked up, he could 'create' anything – including things that didn't operate by the laws of physics."

Dean nodded reluctantly. "All right, so where's his 'Off' switch?"

"I don't know." Sam glanced at him. "I'm not even certain if he knows we're here."

Fred hadn't moved at all, still staring up at the dark television screen, his gaze locked.

Castiel looked down at the man. "Do we have to ... kill him?"

"Excuse me, agents."

Sam, Dean and Castiel turned around to see Dr Mahoney and an orderly standing in the doorway. "I believe that you've done enough questioning of my patients."

Sam glanced at Cas, knowing the doctor had heard the angel's question. He nodded quickly, wondering if the doctor had heard any of the conversation before that.

They left the room, and walked down the hall, back to the building's foyer.

"Real freaking smooth," Dean muttered to Castiel.

Cas looked back down the hall. "Well, we don't have to leave him. I could teleport him."

Sam's head snapped around. "Fred's radioactive, Cas. You zap him – no telling what will happen."

"Me and Sam will circle back tonight, get Fred nice and clean," Dean said, glancing up at the security camera that was watching them. "You go "Invisible Girl" and keep an eye on him. You hear me?"

There was no response and he and Sam stopped, looking behind them. The angel had vanished.

Dean turned back and started walking again. "Good."

* * *

The ride back to the room was silent, Sam sitting, hunched up in the corner between the seat and door, staring out through the windshield, his gaze fixed. Dean glanced across at him, wondering what his brother was brooding over.

_There were a nice, wide variety of topics to choose from_, he recognised wryly. Crowley's plans. The Trans' safety. Kevin's inability to read from the stone piece they had. Fred's nuclear capabilities. Cas' ill-conceived notion to become a hunter … and whatever it was that was still eating through Sam like acid, something he thought was the mixed-up emotions about a girl he'd lost and a normal life and the possibility that that was retreating further and further from him with every day that passed.

He exhaled softly, pulling into the motel parking lot. Sam hadn't mentioned it again, since Whitefish. But he'd seen the moments, the times where his little brother had gone into his memories and stood or sat there, as still and unmoving as Fred'd been, lost in something that was still important to him, still had a vice-grip hold on him.

Sam turned and looked at him as he stopped the engine.

"How long do we baby-sit Cas on hunts?"

Dean shrugged. "Until he gets it out of his system, I guess."

He couldn't tell Sam what the angel had confided to him. It wasn't his to tell, and he and Sam no longer had that bond of trust that might've made it safe otherwise. Cas was looking for something, something to do with his half-human, half-angel existence and he couldn't – he _wouldn't _– cut the angel loose until he'd found it.

"He'll screw us up, you know that, right?" Sam's voice held an undercurrent of something.

"He might," Dean agreed, getting out of the car, hearing the squeak of the passenger door opening behind him. The heavy clunks of the doors closing again were almost simultaneous.

"And you're okay with that?" Sam asked, disbelievingly.

"No, I'm not." Dean opened the room door and walked in, dragging his jacket off and pulling off the tie that'd been half-throttling him all day. "He needs some time to adjust, Sam. We can give him that."

He glanced over his shoulder at his brother. "That okay with you?"

Sam scowled as he took his suit off. "Have to be, won't it?"

Dean walked to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer, passing one to his brother as he went past to his bag. There wasn't any point in continuing the conversation. He could see that Sam was churning over something, but he didn't think it was the angel. And he didn't feel up to getting into the real problem right now.

He stripped off the rest of his clothes and set the beer on the nightstand, going into the bathroom. Long, hot shower, and most of the tiredness would disappear, he knew. Held off for another few hours, anyway.

Sam pulled out jeans and shirts from his bag, dragging them on and shaking out the suit, finding hangers in the closet to hang it up again. He could use a shower, to loosen the tension, get some relief from the lack of sleep. He twisted the top off the beer and swallowed a mouthful, sitting on the edge of the bed and listening to the shower running. Dean'd use up all the hot water anyway, he thought caustically.

Anger was threading its way through him again. Slowly, right now, but it was building. He wasn't sure why. Seeing Fred, having those memories pour back in. The low-grade irritation of having to deal with Cas on a constant basis. The memories of the last year, rising again. _All of the above_, he thought sourly.

He didn't know what he was doing. Didn't know what to do. There was Kevin and shutting the gates. And there was the fact that he couldn't go back – _ever_ – to the life he'd hoped would be his. That wasn't even Dean's fault, but somehow he wanted it to be. Wanted to have a real and present target for his feelings, which were all over the place.

_The question is – what are you running from, Sam?_

Was he still running? Still hiding? He shook his head impatiently. What he'd had, what they'd had together … that'd been real. More than holding on, they'd looked to the future, both of them, even if they hadn't talked about it. A real future together.

_Not possible now_, he thought, and the vein of anger got a little thicker. He couldn't remember how it'd been with Jess, the big things, sure, but not the little things, not the little details of living with her, not the daily minutiae of life with her. How her hair had smelled. The exact colour of her eyes. What she'd liked on her toast in the mornings. Those things had gone, been crushed and buried by the crap his life had turned into. He knew those things about Amelia. He couldn't bear the thought of forgetting that too, having it wiped out.

He got up and walked to the table, opening the laptop and sitting down, watching it load. Fred was radioactive, he thought. They needed a way to get through to him, and he wasn't at all sure that they'd be able to find one. How'd you get through to someone who wasn't present at all? Someone who was locked up in a world of their own making?

* * *

The Impala pulled up behind the retirement home, and Dean and Sam got out.

"I'll get Fred," Sam said.

Dean nodded. "I'll meet you out here."

He walked around to the front doors and ran up the steps. Cas' message had been incoherent and he didn't like to think of what he was going to find. Coming around the corner of the hallway into the recreation room, he stopped and stared at the pink and brown goop that covered what looked like every inch of every surface in the room.

"Oh. You got my message. Good," Castiel said, walking over to him. He glanced at Cas, noting distractedly that the angel was still pristine.

"What the hell happened?"

Cas gestured vaguely around. "There was a pastry mishap."

Dean blinked. "Okay, and?"

"And the frosting reached near-supersonic speeds. I thought –"

"Hey," Sam said from behind them, his voice hard.

Dean turned to look at him. "Hey."

"Fred's gone."

"What?" Castiel stared at Sam.

"Oh, fan-freaking-tastic," Dean said, looking at the angel. "Way to take your eye off the ball."

He turned as the pretty brunette wheeled Mrs Tate toward them, both women still speckled by chocolate cake and pink icing.

"You're not supposed to be here," she said, looking at them. Dean raised a brow.

"Well, trust me, sweetheart, you got bigger fish."

Mrs Tate pulled down the mask that covered her mouth, looking up at the angel adoringly. "Charles, she's wearing my diamonds."

The young woman tried to push the wheelchair past them, and Cas' hand flashed out, catching her wrist under the sparkling bracelet.

"Wait," he said, looking at her.

"What? What's wrong?" she asked.

Cas lifted her arm. "This is Mrs. Tate's bracelet. Where did you get it?"

Sheila smiled up at him.

The girl looked from Castiel to Dean.

"Answer the question," Dean said sharply.

"My boyfriend gave it to me." She shrugged, looking at them blankly.

"Who's your boyfriend?" Sam stepped closer.

"Uh, Ty. Tyler, he works here." She looked around vaguely.

"Orderly, tribal tattoo?" Sam asked, the young man's face flashing into his mind. She nodded.

"Where's he live?" Dean snapped.

* * *

_**Buffington Road, Oklahoma City**_

Three of the six streetlights were out on the narrow road. Dean drove slowly down, Sam leaning out the window with a flashlight, checking house numbers.

"Sixty-four. That's it," he said, and the black car drew in alongside the curb smoothly, headlights doused and engine off.

"Front or back," Sam asked, looking at the dark house as they got out of the car.

"Back." Dean walked around the car.

They walked down the cracked concrete drive, and into the small dirt yard behind the house. The lock was simple, and Dean opened the door, flicking his flashlight on and shining the beam around the room. Kitchen. He headed for the door on the other side.

The living room was small and crowded with furniture, boxes and junk. And, he thought, someone had had a fight in here, looking at the knocked over lamps and scattered papers. "Hey," he said, picking up a printed piece of paper from a stack on a chair. "Bearer bonds. Maybe these belonged to Sheila Tate."

Castiel looked around the room. "So this man is our thief."

"Yeah." Sam played his light over the floor, holding it steady when he saw the legs protruding from behind an upended table. "Dean."

Dean moved across the room and the flashlights showed the young orderly lying on the floor behind the table, his hands pressed over his stomach. He reached behind him and hit the lights, dragging the table out of the way as Tyler opened his eyes and lifted his head. The movement set off a coughing fit.

"Cas," Dean said quietly and moved aside as the angel crouched beside the man on the floor. Tyler tried to sit up, to move away.

"Stay still. Move your hands," Castiel said, lifting the man's hands aside and holding his loosely curled hand above the abdomen. From his palm, light strengthened, and the angel pressed his fingers against the blood-soaked singlet, hand arched over the wound. Tyler gasped, twisting as the light penetrated through skin and muscle, into the torn and bleeding organs.

Castiel stood up and moved back as the young man felt the pain vanish. He leaned up, gingerly lifting his shirt to look at his stomach. The bullet hole was gone.

"How did you –" he started to say, staring at the smooth, blood-smeared skin.

"Guy eats his Wheaties," Dean cut him off and grabbed his arm. "Sam, come on."

They hauled Tyler to his feet, keeping a firm grip on him as he struggled to see past them, pointing at the angel.

"What did you –?"

"Get up." Dean and Sam lifted him off his feet and into a chair. "Come on. Sit down."

"What did you just do to me?!"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Dean raised his voice, leaning on the chair back beside the orderly. "Listen to me. Where is Fred Jones?"

Tyler looked at him, then at Sam and Castiel. "I – he – he took him."

"Who?" Dean yelled at him.

"Mahoney! The doc!" Tyler shrank back in the chair. "Dr. Mahoney. That guy's evil, man, okay?"

"Why?"

"He's using Mr. Jones," Tyler said, shaking his head.

"How?" Sam stepped closer, looking down at the man.

"Look, all Fred does is watch cartoons, but he is magic, okay?" He swallowed nervously, the words spilling out in a flood. "A few weeks ago, I–I slammed my foot in his door. I smashed it flat – and I mean flat. And then when I shook the thing, it popped back up, like something out of a cartoon or whatever."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know," Dean said impatiently, straightening up.

"So I told Dr. Mahoney, and then he started doing experiments," he said, looking nervously from Dean to Sam. "Just – we just wanted to see what he could do."

"What about the robberies?"

"Oh, Mahoney's been skimming off Sunset Fields for years. A lot of those folks – they got stuff stashed away, like, off the books, like," he babbled. "So Mahoney would track down the loot, and then we would take Fred for a drive."

Dean looked at his brother, his expression sour. "Right, and use his bubble of weird to rip people off." He looked back at Tyler. "How did you end up gut-shot?"

"Mahoney!" He looked down at his stomach for a moment. "After – after he anviled that guard, he started freaking out, and then–and then you showed up, and then the cake blew in the day room, and then he lost it."

Sam's brow creased. "What does that mean, 'he lost it'?"

"I mean he's on his way back to the bank right now for one last score," Tyler said, looking at him. "Doc's blowing town. I mean, he said that Fred was a loose end. He was gonna kill him. And then, I–I like Fred, so I said that if he hurt the guy, I'd go to the cops. And I didn't know that he had a gun. And he shot me!"

Dean nodded. "Okay."

Sam looked around the room. "You get this cleaned up and everything – _everything_ that doesn't belong to you – goes back. Right?"

Tyler nodded fast. "Absolutely. No problem."

* * *

They walked out of the house, back to the car.

"Do you think Mr. Jones knows what's happening?" Castiel asked, pausing by the rear door.

Dean walked around the front and opened the driver's door. "I don't know. Seems to me like Fred's living in a dream world, not seeing how it is at all."

Sam looked at him over the roof, sliding into the car as his brother got in. He was, he thought. That's exactly what he was doing. A world he'd created, in his head, to make life bearable. The thought skated perilously close to what he didn't want to think about, and he shook it off impatiently.

"Back to the bank."

"Yeah, pedal to the metal," Dean agreed and pulled out.

* * *

Dean pulled into the alley and stopped the engine, getting out of the car. He looked at Sam.

"All right. Jones has got to be close. I'll hit the bank. You see if you can find him," he said. Sam nodded, striding fast down the alley to the street, Castiel following. Dean started walking down the alley, looking for the bank's rear exit door. The big, white frosted glass windows had to be the rear wall, he thought, slowing down as he passed them. He stopped when he saw the circle. Black. Perfectly round. Eye-level on the brick wall of the bank. He reached out tentatively, his fingers passing through into the black, disappearing from view as they penetrated. He snatched them back, looking at them, then reached out again. His arm went into the circle and kept going.

_Weirder and weirder_, he thought, laughing softly. He couldn't feel anything in there, no boundary or obstacle, no temperature difference or change in the texture of the air. Pulling his arm out, he looked at the hole.

"Awesome."

A quick glance around showed no one watching, no one there. He turned back to the circle and climbed into it.

* * *

Cars were parked along the street that lay perpendicular to the alley, and Sam bent and looked into them as he and the angel walked quickly along the sidewalk. Castiel quickened his pace, a frown drawing down his brows as he felt the surge of the field.

"Can you feel that, Sam? The power?" He stopped beside a van, and Sam came up beside him. It pulled at him, that strength, and he looked in the window, teeth gritted against the almost-uncomfortable sensation as he moved around to the rear door. It wasn't like anything else he'd felt. Almost electrical in nature, but constant, not fluctuating. A field of generation that twanged on the nervous system of his vessel.

The interior of the van was mostly dark, except for one corner. Cas and Sam saw Fred sitting in his wheelchair against one side, his face lit up by the flickering images on the screen he held in his hands.

Sam climbed into the van, going straight to the wheelchair and kneeling beside it.

"Fred, hey," he said, looking at the man's fixed expression. "Fred, hey, buddy. Hey." He gripped Fred's hand, squeezing hard. "Hey, Fred? Listen to me. Can you hear me? Fred!"

He glanced around as Castiel came up beside him. "If we could just talk to him. Hey, buddy. Hey, wake up. Wake up."

The angel leaned forward, putting one hand over Sam's and the other over Fred's. Light began to seep from him.

"Cas?" Sam looked up at the angel's face, drawn in concentration.

"Wait," he said, looking down at the strengthening light and realising what Cas was going to do. "Wait!"

Argentine light flooded out from the angel, blinding and whining with its own high-pitched frequency. Sam screwed up his eyes, turning his head away as the light doubled in brilliance again, wiping out everything.

* * *

Sam opened his eyes and looked around. He was standing in a desert, under a bright blue sky. A painted desert. A flat two-dimensional desert under a flat two-dimensional sky. _This is impossible_, he thought.

"Aha!"

He turned around as a cartoon zipped up the road between himself and the angel, disappearing over the horizon, a bright yellow explosion appearing below the lip of the hill a second later, followed by a mushroom cloud, the colours bright and vivid.

Sam looked at Castiel. "Cas, uh, where are we?"

"Inside Mr. Jones' mind," Castiel looked around and back to him. "You said you wanted to talk to him."

"Who the hell are you?"

The angel and Sam turned to see Fred, on his feet, arms crossed over his chest, his face hard as he stared at them. The sky shattered, with the sound of breaking glass, falling around them. Behind it, the scene had become distorted, black and white and grey, bands of static fritzing up and down. _Signal lost_, Sam thought irrelevantly. Too many motel rooms with crappy antennas and struggling to watch shows on television just like this.

He looked at the man standing in front of him. "Fred. Fred. Um, hey, it's–it's me. I'm, uh – I'm Sam – Sam Winchester."

Fred's eyes narrowed, his head tilting slightly as he looked more closely, memory returning and the hostility fading from his face. "John's boy?"

"That's right," Sam said, relief filling him. He stepped closer.

"The scrawny one? It's only been three, four years since I've seen you, you-you –" Fred said. Behind them, the background was flickering with colour and shades of grey. Sam tried not to look at it.

"More like, uh, twenty," Sam said quickly, cutting him off. "Uh, listen, Fred, I'm gonna need you to focus."

"How did you –," Fred stopped, his eyes narrowing as he studied the young man. _Irrelevant_, he thought. _How he got in. The question was …_

"Why are you here, Sam?"

Sam looked at him, wondering how to word what he needed to say. He drew in a deep breath.

"What you can do, Fred – it's out of control. Out of your control. And someone out there's using it, using you."

For a long moment, Fred just looked at him. Using him? He thought of the times he'd seen things, heard things and pushed them back away, back down. No one could use him. God had given him a gift, a gift so enormous, so powerful, that it'd nearly killed him, several times over, but it was his to wield, his to control. No one else could access it, or force him to use it. To move. To create. To bend and distort and mould the fabric of the universe. That couldn't happen. He shook his head, looking at the ground as he began to walk. "No, no, no, no, no ... no. You're lying!"

Sam glanced around as the … space … they stood morphed gradually into a square room, the walls still shifting greys, static still humming in the background.

"This is happening, Mr. Jones. They're using you," Castiel said quietly.

Fred stopped and turned to face him. "As what –? Some kind of a damn psychic CopperTop? You plug me in, and the whole world goes wacky?" He looked at the angel disparagingly. "It doesn't work that way."

"How would you know?" Sam asking, wincing inwardly as Fred's expression hardened slightly. He could easily end up dead in here, he realised. "No offence, but it seems to me like you've been spending more time in here than you have ... out there." He gestured vaguely around.

Kid was telling the truth. Fred tasted the bitterness of it. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a conversation with someone. Not in recent years, anyhow. Couldn't remember the last time he'd taken a walk outside. Couldn't remember. Couldn't remember.

"You want to know what's the worst thing that can happen to a guy that's got a mind like I got?" he ground out, looking at Sam. "Losing it."

* * *

Inside the vault, safety deposit boxes lined the walls, many of them accessed by small portable holes, giving the room an odd, polka-dotted, whimsical look . Dr Mahoney moved quickly around the narrow area, pulling out the boxes, transferring the contents to the black leather Gladstone bag sitting at one of the table. Dean stepped in through the open door and cocked his gun.

"What's up, Doc?"

Mahoney looked at him warily. "You let me walk, and half of this is yours."

Dean looked at the loot spread out over the table, brow rising as he considered the offer facetiously.

"I think I'm gonna pass," he said, his expression hardening as he looked back at Mahoney. "I'm not really into stealing from sweet old ladies."

"I'm not stealing from them," Mahoney hissed at him. "I'm stealing from their children. Little bastards think they can drop their folks off at a home and visit twice a year, maybe. I took care of all these old geezers. I think I deserve –"

Dean rolled his eyes at the rationalisation. "I don't care!" he growled. "Geez, this is the job, isn't it? You knew what it was when you took it on? Who gives a fuck if you feel hard done by? Do the fucking job and suck it up!"

"Fine," Mahoney said, shoulders slumping a little. "Have it your way."

Dean relaxed a little, straightening up. Assholes always thought they fucking deserved more than they'd signed on for. What was it about people?

Mahoney threw a handful of the bonds at him, shoving him into the wall and grabbing the half-full bag from the table. Dean's foot slipped out on the papers covering the floor, his balance shot as he slid ignominiously down the metal wall.

The gun rose sharply in compensation as he pulled the trigger. The doctor should have been flung forward by the impact of the bullet. Should've had a hole in the centre of his back, black just glinting red. Should've. But didn't.

He stared at the flag that unrolled itself as it came out of the end of his gun. It said 'Bang!'

Mahoney turned to look at it, mouth stretching out in a derisive grin. "Welcome to the fun house!" He spun around and ran as Dean looked at the flag incredulously.

_How did you not know that was going to happen_, he asked himself furiously, scrambling to his feet and pushing off the wall to chase after the doctor. That's what _always_ happens!

* * *

Sam looked at Fred, feeling a curious doubling sensation, seeing himself in the old man standing in front of him.

"I know it's easier, in here, Fred. I get that," he said. "But the cartoons aren't –"

"Cartoons – yeah, yeah, I always loved them when I was a kid," Fred said abruptly, smiling a little at his memories. Behind them the flat surfaces of the room changed to television test patterns as he found clarity in his feelings. "They made me feel ... happy. Safe. They were ..."

The patterns disappeared, and Sam saw that Fred was searching for what he was trying to say, trying to express.

"Something to hold on to," he said softly.

Fred looked up at him, nodding. "Yeah."

Sam shook his head slightly. "They're not really something you can hold on to, Fred. They're not strong enough."

"Sammy, I can't – I can't remember – not all the time, not out there," Fred looked at him for a moment, then dropped his head. "It takes too much out of me, I don't have that strength anymore."

"You do, Fred, s'like riding a bicycle, right? You have the strength to get control –"

"No, Sam," Fred said, fear edging his voice as he realised what Sam wanted, what he was asking of him. "I don't, not anymore."

* * *

Dean shot across the tiled floor, gaining easily on the doctor. C'mon, he forced himself faster, looking at the distance reducing between them, one good …

He jumped, his hands stretching out and his fingertips on the cord fabric of Mahoney's jacket when he felt the world freeze. He could just make out the words, mirrored in the polish of the timber counter next to him.

**_DEAN WINCHESTER_**

_(HUNTERUS HEROICUS)_

And lower, blurred on the shiny surface of the tiled floor.

**_DR. MAHONEY_**

_(GROTESQUES VILLAINUS)_

_What the fuck?!_

Motion and time and gravity returned together and he tightened his grip on the doctor's shoulders as they crashed to the floor, hearing the whoof of the air in the doctor's chest rushing out of his mouth. He rolled to his feet and blinked as Mahoney pulled out a large, cast-iron fry pan from … somewhere …

The hard surfaces of the big room echoed with the clanging each time the frypan hit him. He was the good guy, he wasn't supposed to be getting hammered by the bad guy, he thought dazedly, not even seeing the pan swinging for him again. It hit him in the face and he staggered back, glimpsing the bas relief outline of his face in the bottom of the pan as a cuckoo called from somewhere nearby, someone played a drumroll and his vision began to close out.

Hitting the ground was actually kind of a relief. He leaned on his elbow, watching the doctor's feet, multiple copies of them, shimmy and dance around each other.

"Give it up! I've been dealing with this crazy for months!" Mahoney snapped at him. "And you idiot! Bringing a gun to a gag fight!"

Dean felt the ringing and clanging slowing down in his head, the doc's feet resolving themselves finally into a single pair, unmoving and right where they should've been.

"Yeah, well, I did bring this." He pulled out the can of paint from somewhere _(where?)_ and held it up. "And 'X' marks the spot."

Mahoney's gaze snapped down to his feet, then up to the ceiling as a long, whistling noise filled the room. He dove to one side, Dean rolling clear to the other as the anvil hit the tiles, smashing the floor and sending a cloud of dust into the air.

* * *

Fred didn't want to go back. Didn't want to leave here, Sam thought, walking closer to him.

"I need you to stop this, Fred. You can do it. Just take control of it and bring us out."

Fred shook his head. "It's too hard!"

"Look, it can be nice living in a dream world. It can be great. I know that," Sam said softly, ignoring the changes to the walls of the room, focussing tightly on getting this through, getting it right. "And you can hide, and you can pretend all the crap out there doesn't exist, but you can't do it forever because ... eventually … whatever it is you're running from – it'll find you."

He looked at the old man sympathetically. "It'll come along, and it'll punch you in the gut. And then ... then you got to wake up, because if you don't, trying to keep that dream alive will destroy you. It'll destroy everything."

Fred stared at him. Was he right? Would he destroy the world to stay in here, where it was safe _(for him)_ and quiet and he didn't have to think or worry about anything? He'd never been a quitter. And he'd never been a bad guy. And he knew, he knew he could stop all of this without even raising a sweat, even now. The colour bled out of the walls, out of the room, the light brightening until it filled everything.

* * *

Dean rolled to his feet as Mahoney grabbed his bag and ran for the hole in the wall. He saw Mahoney tuck up to jump through, and rebound to the floor with a yell, the wall as unyielding and solid in the centre of the hole as it was to either side.

"Looks like somebody turned off the boob tube," Dean commented mildly, watching him get to his feet.

The doctor scrambled to his feet, looking at him. "Good." He pulled a revolver from his waistband and pulled back the hammer, pointing it at Dean. "Means I can use this."

Dean looked at the barrel of the gun, thinking fast. Mahoney had gone for a gut-shot on the orderly, safe and hard to miss, especially at close range. It told him that the doc didn't use firearms much, wasn't much of a shot. If he broke, dove or rolled, he could get behind the counter before the doc could keep the piece steady enough on him to do any damage. He tensed, his gaze shifting to the man's face, looking for the tells that would telegraph the man's intentions –

"No!"

Fred stood in the centre of the room, Sam and Castiel behind him as both Dean and Mahoney snapped their heads around to look at him. The old man's face was furious, and he pointed at Mahoney's gun, the barrel beginning to quiver. "You are never going to hurt anyone again!"

Mahoney gasped as the gun twisted in his hand, turning, his hand flashing up to his wrist, trying to force it away, to pull his fingers free of the grip, of the trigger. His skin felt welded to the plastic and metal, and his eyes widened as the barrel curved around on the fulcrum of his wrist, the small round hole at the end becoming more and more circular as it centred on him.

Dean glanced at Fred. The old man was concentrating on the gun completely, he thought, guiding it and forcing it at the same time. He looked back at the doctor, seeing the man's face running with sweat as he struggled.

Mahoney didn't feel the muscles in his finger moving, didn't hear the loud retort as the hammer fell. Didn't feel anything as his body fell to the floor.

Fred turned away as the man dropped. Sam jumped slightly at the gunfire, seeing his brother flinch as well. It was one thing to talk about power, he knew. Another thing to see it in action. And he had the feeling that Fred had only been using a fraction of the well of power that lay hidden inside his tall, thin frame.

"And that's all, folks," Dean said quietly, looking down at the doctor, chest heaving as the adrenalin surge started to dissipate.

"My God," Fred said softly, looking around the room. The anvil. The hole on the wall. He glanced at Dean and a spark of memory hit him, those eyes, in a small boy's face, which had been screwed up a little at his first taste of brew.

Sam looked at him. "Fred. You good?"

"Now I'm good," Fred said forcefully. He turned to Sam. "In a month, year ...?"

He sighed and closed his eyes tiredly. "Nobody gets sharper with age."

Dean watched him. There was only one end to this story, he knew. Fred knew it too. And he thought Sam knew it, though from the expression on his brother's face, he didn't want to.

"I'm gonna lose control again, and somebody's gonna get hurt," Fred said, turning to Sam. "_Again_. You got to make it stop."

"There might be a way," Castiel said slowly. "The procedure will be painful, and ... when it's over, I'm not sure how much of you will be left."

Fred looked down at the anvil that lay on the floor. The devil? Or the deep blue sea? He would take the deep, blue sea every single time. He'd been hiding out for years now. There was barely anything of himself left at those times, as if he'd already had one foot out the door and was just waiting for the sweet tones of a trumpet to call him home. What difference did it make now? His great and mighty power, trapped in an old and defective and failing body, only intermittently under the control of a mind that was tired, that wanted ... not responsibility, but peace. He drew in a deep breath and looked at the angel.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" he snapped.

* * *

Sam stood in the day room, next to his brother and the angel, looking at Fred. The old man sat in his wheelchair, facing the window, a slight smile curving his mouth.

"Is he, uh – is he okay?" Dean asked Cas. He looked okay, better than when he'd been watching the cartoons, Dean thought. Cas hadn't given them the full details on what he'd removed from Fred.

"He's listening to 'Ode to Joy'." Castiel said, as Fred closed his eyes and the smile widened. "He's happy."

_At least someone is_, Dean thought, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. "All right, well, let's blow this termite terrace," he said, turning away from Fred and looking at the angel. "Cas, you get to ride shotgun. You done good."

"Thanks, but I, uh ..." Cas looked down for a moment. "I can't come. I, uh ..."

* * *

He stood in the office. Reflections, he thought, looking at Naomi. And her. Smooth, edgeless. Except for her voice, which held many edges.

"Hello, Castiel," she smiled at him. "And, no."

"No?"

"I can see what you're thinking, and I won't allow it," Naomi said firmly, the smile still curving her lips, but far from her eyes.

"You don't understand. I have been trying to pretend that I can escape what I did in Heaven, but I can't," Castiel said, looking down at her. "All that pain that I caused – I – I have to come back, to make things right."

It was essential. He didn't have a soul. Didn't have a body. But he was still one of God's sons, and he couldn't turn away from what he had to do. From the punishment he needed to face and the atonement he had to make.

"And you are ... by doing what you're told. Castiel, understand this – unless I ring my bell, you will stay out of Heaven."

He looked away, defeated. "Well, then, what should I do?"

"What do you want to do?"

* * *

"You – you what, Cas?" Sam looked at the angel, brow creased up. "Why can't you come with us?"

_Another hole. Not as long this time but he still felt it there_. He didn't know what that meant. Only that it was important, for some reason. "I ... I want to stay with Mr. Jones. Someone should watch over him for a few days, just to be safe."

"Okay, and then what?" Dean looked at him questioningly.

"Then I'm not sure," Cas said quietly, looking at him. Dean looked away, uncertain of how he felt about that. He'd been prepared to keep the angel close until he'd figured that part out.

"But I know I can't run anymore," Cas continued firmly. "I need to work it out."

Sam felt a jolt inside himself. He couldn't run anymore either. No matter how much he wanted to.

Dean turned away, slapping his brother on the shoulder as he walked off. "Sam, you with me?"

Sam nodded distantly to Cas and turned around, following Dean out of the room.

* * *

_**I-40, Mississippi**_

"_Don's alive."_

The words had hit him like a sledge-hammer, driving thought, feeling … everything … out of his mind and leaving him sitting there, feeling as fragile and vacant as an empty glass. He still couldn't quite get his head around the fact that the man he'd thought was gone ... dead, buried, never to return … was sitting with her right now. Holding her, maybe.

It was a peculiar state of mind. If he'd known before, he never would've gotten involved with her. If Don had been alive but out of the picture when they'd met, he could've felt something more decisive right now than the amorphous mix of dread and pain and longing that filled him. He had no rights in this situation. He'd known that as soon as she'd looked at him. He wasn't the husband. He wasn't … _anything_ … anymore.

Was he living in a dream world still? A world where he could forget about his past, forget all that happened and all that he'd done and just be … moment to moment, day to day. How long could've he done that, he wondered? A year? Ten? Before, as he'd told Fred, it would've backed up and punched him in the gut and he'd have to face it or ruin everything.

He'd told Stan that he'd run with the death of his brother. And that was kind of true. He'd been running long before that, though. Running from his memories. Running from the things that he hadn't wanted – couldn't bear – to look at. Choices and events. Emotions and thoughts and decisions. Grief and agonising pain and an old anger that was deeper than the ocean and wider than the plains.

He looked down at his hands, tightly clenched into fists in his lap, and made an effort to loosen them, before his brother noticed and questioned him on it. The thought brought a hollow inward laugh. Had it been him, all the time, screwed up, instead of Dean? Had Dean really been the sane one, the one who was thinking before acting?

Glancing at his brother's profile, outlined against the milky blue prairie sky, he thought of all the times he'd asked Dean, begged him, to open up, to tell him, to share the crap that had been eating through him. Definitely the pot calling the kettle black. Dean would listen, he knew. That was the strange thing. So long as it wasn't about draining his own poison, his brother was a good listener, for the most part. Really heard what you were trying to say, most of the time. But they'd both gotten out of the habit of asking. Had stopped a while ago. And the secrets were still there.

* * *

_**Winona, Mississippi**_

Dean in the car, in the slot in front of the room, leaning his head against the wheel. He'd gone out forty minutes ago, ostensibly to get a six pack of beers. He needed time alone.

Sam had been getting more and more tense, the further behind they'd left Oklahoma. Twice, he'd seen his brother sitting rigidly, hands curled into fists, as they'd headed first east, then south. He had no idea what was causing it, but he recognised the signs. Pretty soon the tension would turn to anger. He exhaled and leaned back, tipping his head back against the seat and closing his eyes.

Despite the low-grade irritation of Cas' constant presence, the angel had, at least, provided a buffer between them. A barrier of courtesy, if nothing else. That was gone now. Sam'd stomped into the room when they'd arrived, throwing his bag at the foot of his bed and slamming the laptop onto the table, muttering about finding another job.

The last few weeks had been a hiatus between them, a period of truce, he guessed. Or maybe they'd been so involved in their own individual crap, they hadn't really had the time to let that crap out on each other. He didn't know.

One of the many, many things he didn't know, he thought sourly. How to deal with his own problems. How to help Sam talk about whatever it was that was bothering him. How to find Crowley … he exhaled and reached out for the six-pack beside him. _Lock it down and cover it up, for now_. If they found themselves with time on their hands, he might be able to get some of it sorted. But for the moment, he needed to keep his head clear. Because his brother was stewing over something, and it wouldn't be long before that pressure cooker exploded.


	18. Chapter 18 Jump the Gun

**Chapter 18 Jump the Gun**

* * *

_**Amory, Mississippi**_

Sam stood in the middle of the attic, the pump action shotgun cradled lightly in his hands, watching the dust motes twinkle and float slowly through the shaft of sunshine that was coming through a hole in the shingle roof.

A few feet away, Dean wrestled with the steamer trunk, shoving boxes and suitcases off it randomly as he tried to yank it out from beneath the pile of crap that was covering it. The attic had stored the day's warmth and he could feel a trickle of sweat running through his hair. Goddamned thing weighed a ton and something was catching, under the pile … he lifted the end he had hold of, twisting the trunk slightly and felt the trunk move forward again.

"_Would it bother you if I take a few days to get this clear in my head?"_

Sam's face tightened as the memory jumped into his mind.

_Don was on his way home. And he'd spent the last day doing nothing but think of what he should do, trying to force his emotions aside and look at the situation rationally. There was no right or wrong here. Only pain. Someone would lose out. He thought it would be him._

The temperature in the attic plummeted and Dean's head snapped up. He twisted aside as he felt the air turn to ice around him, a scent of dried up old leaves and dirt surrounding him, filling his nose and mouth as he dragged in a deep breath. The spirit solidified right next to him, and his fingers scrabbled for the shotgun that lay on the floor next to his knee.

"Sam!"

Cold fingers dug into his shoulders, leaving a trail of glittering frost over his clothes as they moved across his chest.

"SAM!"

The boom of the shotgun echoed around the closed space and Dean fell back to one knee, feeling the smooth wood of the sawn-off butt under his hand. His skin was goosefleshed where the ghost had touched him. He stared at his brother. Sam looked back at him, racking the pump on the gun, his face expressionless.

Dean turned away, mouth compressed, eyes stony as he hauled the trunk clear of the pile of stuff and knocked the rusted padlock from the hasp with the stock of the shotgun. He threw open the lid, looking down at the two mummified bodies that had been left in it. He picked up the canister of salt from the floor, and pulled off the top, throwing the entire contents over them. Turning around he took the small can of gasoline that his brother passed him, splashing it over the bodies, the back of his neck prickling strongly, half-glancing behind him as a cooler draught seem to eddy and swirl around the heated space.

"Sam, can you see anything?"

There was silence behind him and he turned around sharply, seeing Sam's attention turned inward again, swearing under his breath as he pulled the matchbook from his pocket, tearing a match off and striking it, tossing it into the trunk.

The ghost manifested in between them, and the barrel of the sawn-off rose straight up.

"Sam, down!" he yelled, fingers tight against the triggers. Sam started, turning to look at him, and the ghost flickered. Dean felt the temperature drop around him and saw his brother's gaze focussing, the long barrel of the pump action coming up. He fell forward, twisting aside as the retort of the shot shook through the attic, pellets of rock salt peppering the walls and floor and ceiling. Biting back a shout at the ones that had hit him, he rolled over and squeezed the triggers as the ghost appeared again, this time consumed by flame as the bones burned.

"Are you okay?" Sam strode over to him, stretching out a hand. Dean looked up at him sourly.

"Aside from the fact that your head was somewhere else and you hit me with that last shot?" he asked, taking the hand and letting Sam haul him to his feet.

Sam looked away, jaw tight. "Sorry."

Dean opened his mouth and closed it again abruptly. There was no point to arguing about this now. The salt pellets stung like a sonofabitch and he could see blood seeping through his t-shirt. He needed to get out of here.

* * *

The bottle stood on the table, a little over a third down. He'd drunk it and chased down two painkillers before getting into the shower and letting the warm water dissolve the pellets in the wounds. Beat having his brother poking around and pulling them out one at a time.

Most of the pocked divots had stopped bleeding by the time he got out of the shower and had dried off. Dean sat on the edge of the bed, taping over the couple that were persisting. He looked up as Sam came in, two large paper bags in one hand, a six-pack in the other.

"I could've done that," Sam said, frowning at him.

He looked up and shook his head. "Quicker this way."

Sam heard the slight slur to his words and glanced at the bottle, shrugging. "Whatever you say."

Satisfied that he'd got the main holes, Dean pulled his shirt down over his head and got up slowly, walking to the table and screwing the lid back onto the bottle as Sam put the bags down.

He sat down as Sam did, taking the offered bag and pulling out a wrapped burger, hesitating as he looked at his brother.

"What happened to you?"

Sam looked up, one brow raised. "When?"

"When I took that all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii," he said exasperatedly. "On the job!"

"I got distracted. It won't happen again," Sam said, unwrapping his food and taking a bite.

"You don't get distracted on a job, you fucking well hit me," Dean snapped. "What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing."

"Bull."

"I wasn't aiming for you," Sam looked at him defensively. "It was a reaction; I saw the ghost and I fired."

"Right."

Sam shrugged, taking another bite.

Dean watched his gaze cut away. The girl, he thought, looking down at the burger in his hands. Amelia. Whatever had happened, it was still ricocheting through his brother's mind. His feelings were mixed about talking about it. Sam had given up on him for that girl. Turned away from his responsibilities and gone normal and pretended that he had no family, no past. It still hurt that his brother had been able to do that.

But something had happened that had torpedoed Sam's intentions of staying in that life. And it was something big, something painful.

He finished his burger and twisted the top off the bottle of beer, washing down the last of the food. Like it or not, he needed to know more about it. He glanced across the table. Sam was eating mechanically, staring at the table top.

* * *

Dean waited until they were on their second bottle, the food cleared away.

"What went wrong between you and Amelia?" he asked Sam quietly.

Sam looked up at him, barely hiding the surprise he felt at the question. "Why do you want to know?"

Dean shrugged slightly, reaching mentally for words that wouldn't put his brother on the defensive, wouldn't antagonise or belittle his feelings. "You haven't talked about anyone like that since Jess."

He watched Sam's face close up as he looked away, and wondered if he'd been too blunt anyway. After a moment, Sam dragged in a deep breath and made a vague gesture.

"We were both running," he said, flicking a glance at Dean. "I felt like – I'd – I was trying to forget everything, and uh, she – her husband had been reported killed, in Afghanistan, about eight months before – before we met."

He exhaled, and tipped his bottle up, swallowing a couple of mouthfuls before he put it back on the table.

"At first, it was – it was kind of like finding a life-ring, you know, something to hold on to, something to just – I don't know – give us an anchor, let us hold onto life, stop running, stop going over and over the crap that never let us sleep." He shook his head, and Dean's eyes narrowed as he got a sense of where Sam'd been, in the time between when he'd given up the search and he'd found her.

"We would talk around what had happened – to both of us. I couldn't – I couldn't tell her, not the truth, not about my life – and she, she was – she didn't know how to talk what was really hurting her," he continued slowly, memories pressing up against him. He'd realised almost immediately that it wasn't just the grief and shock of losing Don, that had screwed up Amelia. There were things she felt guilty about, things that she'd hidden from herself. He'd thought that they would have the time together, time to go through those things. To get them out and stop them from poisoning her. He'd thought that maybe, given enough time, that could happen for him, too.

Dean listened, watching his brother's feelings flicker over his face, doubt and a yearning expression, a remembered warmth, and a look that was almost anger, edged by fear. Whatever had gone on in the patched-together relationship hadn't been easy, he thought.

"We moved out of the motel and found a house and we were just moving in there – we'd just moved in there, and she'd called her dad, and -," Sam hesitated, looking at the table top as he tried to make sense of what had happened next, shock still reverberating through his nerves at those memories. "She got a call that her husband was still alive."

_Christ_. Dean looked at Sam's face, understanding suddenly where Sam was, why he couldn't move past it, why his emotions were so all-over the place, sometimes so much stronger, then fading away.

"So you left?" he asked softly.

Sam nodded. "I thought – she – I thought it was the right thing to do."

"You don't now?"

"I don't know," Sam said tiredly. "It – she – I don't know."

Dean watched him drop his head, fingers running through his hair, frustration and doubt evident in the gesture.

"I don't know if anything I've done has been right," he said, lifting his gaze to meet his brother's.

Lifting his beer, Dean looked away. He'd figured that it'd been big. He hadn't realised that the real problem was that it'd been murky. Sammy had been swimming through the greys as well.

"You did the right thing, Sam," he said quietly, setting the bottle back on the table and looking at him.

* * *

_**Carencro, Louisiana**_

The darkness was cool, not like it would be in the summer months, when the air would feel like syrup and it would be filled with the constant whine and hum of insects. Benny scrubbed the pot in the sink, the hot water and white suds covering his hands as he listened to her moving fast around the board floors.

"I sent Anthony home, so the kitchen's all yours. And be sure to lock up the door and, uh, set the alarm ...," Elizabeth said distractedly, grabbing her coat from the coat hook and looking around the open room. "Turn off the A/C, check the burners, check the griddle –"

He turned around, wiping his hands as he looked at the tension that filled her face, hunched her shoulders. It'd taken him a while to find her, not knowing that she existed until he seen the gravestone. He'd had no idea that Alice had been pregnant when she'd gone. He'd wondered if she had known, or if when she found out, she'd looked for him. The speculations were pointless. It'd all been a long, long time ago.

"And clear off the cold table. I got it," he said, the soft Louisiana drawl pronounced, his expression warm and indulgent. "Go on, now."

"Thank you, Roy," she smiled at him, turning to the door and then turning back as another thought hit her. "Oh, and, uh ... don't forget to "Z" out the register –"

Benny nodded. "And batch out the credit-card machines. I know," he finished the sentence. "Darlin', it's not my first rodeo, all right?"

Elizabeth smiled ruefully. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She walked out through the screen door, the quiet bang as it hit the doorframe making her exit final. Benny looked down at the clean counter, mouth quirked at one corner. Girl took her responsibilities so seriously he wondered how she slept at night. A family trait, perhaps.

"Hell of a girl, that Elizabeth," Dwayne Mitchell turned slowly from watching the door back to him, sipping the black coffee in his hand.

"Yeah," Benny said softly. "Yeah, she really is."

He didn't know exactly what he was looking for here, contented right now to be close to her, to know their connection, to feel it fill him with a peace he hadn't felt in more than eighty years. He wasn't hungry when he was here. That'd surprised him, a little, at first. He looked back at Dwayne as the man put down his empty cup. "Refill?"

"Sure," Dwayne put his cup down in front of him. Benny went to the filter machine to get the pot, aware of the man's eyes on him as he came back. "You got designs?"

Benny looked at him for a moment, uneasy at the turn in the conversation. Dwayne was a regular, but not a particularly well-liked one.

"Nah," Benny said. He poured out the fresh coffee and looked at the man. "She's more like a little sister to me, you know?"

"So you don't mind if I take a shot?" Dwayne asked quietly.

For a heartbeat, Benny felt a hunger throb through his veins. He looked at the man in front of him and there was nothing in his eyes but the cold-blooded calculation of a predator. He pushed that feeling down, his expression impassive, and drew in a shallow breath. The day Lizzie went out with this loser would be the day he was washed clean of the monster inside of him.

"She's all yours, chief."

He pushed the filled cup back across the counter to Dwayne, his hands steady. Julian had been right about him in one way, he thought caustically. He felt too much for what he was. Felt too deeply. All of those feelings, those messy, _human_ feelings should have been petrified along with his cells the day he'd made his first kill. But they hadn't been.

"Hey." Across the room the man in the booth tapped his empty mug on the red formica table top. "Please?"

Benny looked over at the burned-out hunter sitting there. He'd made the man as soon as he'd walked in the door, the twitches and spasms singling him out, the clumsy questions that had followed confirming it. He wasn't sure why the man hadn't made a move yet, although it was possible that he was waiting for some proof. A corpse, maybe, with a hole in its neck. Benny picked up the coffee pot and walked over to the booth, filling the empty mug.

"Thanks," the man said, lifting his head and looking up at him.

Man would be waiting a long time – a long, long time – for that, Benny thought as he walked back behind the counter.

Every two weeks, he'd hopped on the 49 and driven the few miles down to Lafayette, _visiting the hospitals_, he thought of it. It took less than an hour to fill the cooler and he didn't need much. Purgatory had reduced his … appetite … to a very reasonable level.

He put the pot back on the warmer and returned to the sink, finishing the pot and rinsing it off. Here, where he'd been born, with family and the easy life that wasn't quite as he'd remembered but which hadn't changed so much, not like the rest of the country, he was fine. Hell, he was happy.

* * *

At midnight, he looked around the clean, empty room from the doorway, and hit the lights, turning off all but the neon signs that glowed softly in the front windows. All done.

His camper was parked around the back, and he thought he'd relax for a while. He'd picked up a load of secondhand books, the last trip into town, and reading had always been a favourite pastime, escaping into other worlds, other minds, other lives. He didn't feel the need for escape now, but the addiction of learning was still strong.

He pulled the front door shut, hearing the lock click loudly in the silence, the keys going straight into his pocket, and walked down the porch steps. The rustle, in the thick marsh woods to his left, might have gone unnoticed by a human. To him, it was as loud as a brass band, and out of place. The faint and distant scents that came on the thin, night breeze were equally out of place.

_Blood._

_And flowers. And rot._

He turned and started walking toward it, feeling his hackles rise along the back of his neck.

Behind him, he heard the footfalls of the inept hunter who'd been shadowing him and he grimaced. Desmond had upped the ante and the idiot trailing him was almost certainly going to get the wrong impression.

He ghosted through the trees, leaving no trail behind and not even disturbing the foliage as he passed through. Copper-sharp, the smell gave him warning and he looked down in the darkness of the shadows under the trees at Dwayne's body, blood spilling out and soaking into the ground beside him from the ragged tear in the side of his neck. _Goddammit_.

Behind him, a twig snapped, accompanied by the soft slurring sound of leaves pushed together, pushed aside.

_Goddammit_.

Benny slipped away, his eyes piercing the darkness easily. A shining hair, caught in the leaves of a shrub to the right of the path caught his eye, and he sped up, following the barely-there trail away from the body.

Behind him, he heard a thump and muttered swearing, a harshly indrawn breath. He thought the hunter had probably discovered Dwayne.

* * *

_**I-20, Mississippi**_

Creedence played softly through the car's speakers as Dean drove west, the beat underscored by the rhythmic sound of the tyres as they crossed the concrete seams on the freeway.

He watched the road, aware of the engine, of the steering, of the feel of the car and the feel of the road and of his brother, staring out through the windshield beside him.

He hadn't known what else to say to Sam, back in Amory when the silence had stretched out between them. _I'm sorry? Maybe it's all for the best? At least you found out?_ _This is why hunters don't get involved with chicks on a long-term basis? _Those things had rocketed through his mind and he'd rejected them all, knowing that nothing he could say to Sam would help. Sam had gotten up and gone out. He'd been gone for a couple of hours, and when he'd let himself back into the room, the sorrow had mostly gone. In its place was a simmering tension, one wrong word away from anger.

* * *

_**I-55, Mississippi**_

"Bacon-cheese, chicken-salad, sodas to go?" The girl at the window held up a cardboard tray and looked around expectantly. Dean nodded, taking the tray and turning away from the counter, walking back to the car. He was starving and the smell of the burger was infiltrating his immediate airspace, making saliva gather in his mouth.

He opened the door of the car and slid into the driver's seat, glancing at Sam as his brother stared straight ahead, listening to the caller.

"Yeah," Sam said tensely. "And you're certain? You sure? Okay. Great. Just, uh, just hang tight till you hear from me, okay?"

"Who is it?" Dean whispered hoarsely, shifting the tray to his lap.

"No, listen to me," Sam snapped, holding a finger up to his brother. "I said hang tight."

Sam hung up and shoved the phone back in his jacket pocket, his exhale gusty.

"We got to get."

Dean looked down at the food. "Can I at least finish my burger?"

"We got a vamp kill, Dean," Sam said sharply, then turned to look at him. "Carencro, Louisiana."

Sam watched his brother's shoulders drop, relaxing as memory flooded in.

"Huh. It's been a while since I've had étouffée," Dean said with a smile. He picked up his burger. "Who's the source?"

"Martin Creaser."

Dean stilled, the burger in his hands as he looked at his brother. Sam looked back, his face expressionless.

"Sorry – for a minute there, I thought you said _Martin_ Creaser," Dean said, feeling his appetite disappear as Sam continued to stare back at him. "Crazy Martin from the loony bin?"

Sam looked away. "He checked himself out of Glenwood Springs a couple of months ago," he said shortly. "He wasn't committed, Dean, he was in there voluntarily."

"And?" Dean snorted. "Shouldn't he be assembling toys in a padded room? What's he doing back on the job?"

"I asked him," Sam replied, an edge along his voice.

Dean turned in his seat. "You what?" he asked, disbelief filling his voice.

"Look, I called him from Missouri. I was looking for other hunters –" Sam said defensively.

"Missouri." Dean voice was flat. Sam's gaze cut away and Dean felt the widening between them again, stretching out thinly. No trust. No commitment. No bond.

Sam shrugged. "Martin called me when he got out, asked if I had anything for him that might help him ease back into the game. He seemed okay – mostly – so I said yes. He found Benny a week ago. He's been keeping an eye on him."

Dean looked out through the windshield. _Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable_. He seemed okay – _mostly_ – what the fuck was that? He turned back to his brother as Sam mentioned Benny. Sam looked away.

_Alright, pull it back_, Dean told himself. Sam was irrational about the vampire and he knew that. Didn't realise until now just how irrational.

"You put 'mostly okay' Martin on Benny?" he said slowly. Sam's mouth tightened a little in acknowledgement.

"What is '_mostly okay'_ doing hunting at all?".

He watched his brother's harden up as Sam looked away, his frustrated exhale hissing out between his teeth. "Not hunting, Dean – tracking. Observe and report only. I was crystal clear about that."

"Wow. I can't believe that," Dean looked away. Had that been the reason for the truce between them? Sam organising a whacked-out hunter to follow his friend around to – what? To prove that Benny was staying on the straight and narrow? Or to prove that he'd been wrong and rub his face in it? _Fuck this_, he thought tiredly.

"Really, Dean? You don't believe that?" Sam snapped at him, the disappointment in Dean's face, in his voice, escalating the anger inside. Disappointed again, because he hadn't just taken Dean's word for the vamp's good will? _Fuck this_.

"Because Benny's a vampire. And any hunter worth his salt isn't gonna let one just walk around freely. So I had Martin keep tabs on him. And right now, it's looking like I made the right call."

Dean looked at him. "So Martin's saying Benny did this?"

_Rein it back_, Sam thought, clamping down on the desire to yell at him, _don't blow up or he'll never believe it_. "Yeah."

Dean nodded slightly, looking away. "Okay."

Sam stared at him. He hadn't expected that simple capitulation. Hadn't expected it at all.

Beside him, Dean heard his brother's surprise in the silence. It had been meant to trap him, he knew. Meant to force him into admitting that he'd made a bad choice. But it could work the other way. There was no way Benny was drinking people down there. He knew that too. His trust in the vampire went as deep in him as it could possibly go. So, it would be a chance to show Sam that he'd been wrong.

"Okay?" Sam asked finally, not sure if he'd heard that right at all.

Dean looked down at the cooling burger in his hands. "If Benny's in Louisiana draining folks ..." He turned to look at his brother. "We should look into it."

He met Sam's eyes steadily for a moment, then moved the food to the seat beside him, leaning forward and turning the key. The Impala's engine rumbled into life and he pulled out of the slot, turning right and letting the car idle down to the interstate service road.

He could feel Sam's doubts and uncertainties filling the car. For a long time, the dynamic between them had remained the same. He'd been the act-first, think-later brother. Sam had been the one who'd cautioned, who'd waited, who'd thought about what they were doing and why. He didn't know, exactly, when that had changed. Or even what had changed it. Sometime in the last three years, he'd thought.

Sam had been through the wringer and somewhere, in all that torture, in the mess that the hallucinations had left behind, he'd had to pull it altogether and keep going because at the same time, his big brother'd been close to giving up completely. Dean pulled in a deep breath, fingers closing around the wheel a little more closely. It hadn't been the first time, either, he acknowledged morosely to himself.

_Yeah, well, you're a hypocrite, Dean. How did you feel when Dad sold his soul for you? 'Cause I was there. I remember. You were twisted and broken. And now you go and do the same thing. To me. What you did was selfish._

He smiled a little, not a shred of humour in it. Sam'd been right about that. He had been. He'd been tired and heartsick and he hadn't given a damn about how it was going to end. He'd had a whole year to figure out how much worse it would all get.

He straightened up a little in the seat, his fingers clamping hard around the wheel as the recognition of when and how the changes had come fell into his mind, complete and inarguable and resonant.

* * *

_**Carencro, Louisiana**_

Dean pulled off onto the two lane and followed it into town, the flat land and single-storey homes, a mix of frame and brick mixed cheerfully together and defying a classification of the people who lived there, on either side.

"Where are we heading?" He turned right toward the centre of town, slowing down as a woman led a group of children across the road in front of him.

"Corner of St Charles and Bateaux Streets," Sam said stiffly, gesturing to the right. "Another right and we should be there."

Dean nodded, ignoring the tension in his brother's voice. He turned and pulled into the forty-five degree angle parking space, stopping the engine, pulling out the keys and getting out in a single smooth action.

The Beaudelaire was a walk-up four storey building in clay-red brick, a deep-green front door set back a little from the sidewalk by a single step. Beside the door, a weathered sign gave the details of the rooms for rent.

"Room?" Dean started to climb the stairs, glancing back over his shoulder.

"Two."

They came onto the landing and turned down the hall, number two was at the end. Raising his hand to knock, Sam froze as the door was pulled open.

Martin glanced at Dean and looked up at Sam. "You said look for an eruption. How's Mount Vesuvius?"

Sam walked past him, feeling his brother's scepticism rising. Maybe it hadn't been a great idea. But it had still worked, he told himself firmly, walking past the bed to lean against the wall between the two windows.

"Sonofabitch took me three weeks to get a lead on, but I got into town about a week ago. Up until last night, nothing. He's been clean," Martin said, looking from Dean who by the bed, to Sam and back.

"Doing what?" Dean looked at Creaser. Martin had looked better the last they'd seen him, he thought critically. He was hyped, his body giving little twitches as if he was brushing against a stray live wire.

"Just minding his own business." Martin shrugged. "Working at the gumbo shack."

"Benny's working at a gumbo shack?" Dean said, inclining his head disbelievingly.

"Yeah," Martin said. "Slinging hash, pouring coffee – the whole bit. And he may be Benny to you –," he added slyly. "Folks around here call him Roy."

_Roy. Uh huh_. "Martin, you sure you're running on a full charge?" Dean asked quietly.

Martin laughed nervously. "Yeah. L-l-little s-shock therapy in the morning, and I-I'm good to go," he said, frowning as he looked back at Sam.

Dean's face smoothed out as he turned his head to look at Sam.

Sam ignored the look. "Tell us what happened last night."

"So, I followed him home, just like every night. He turned up a path. I hear a scream. I catch up. Then – there he is. The old coot that Roy was eyeballing at the joint – vamped," he said, gesturing as he spoke.

"Wait – did you actually see Benny kill the guy or not?" Dean asked, unimpressed by the theatrics.

Martin flashed a look at Sam and looked back at Dean defensively. "I saw enough."

"Well, then, how can you be sure it was Benny if you didn't actually see him do it?" Dean pressed, watching the man jitter slightly across the floor closer to Sam and back again.

"B-b-because I saw Benny turn up the path, and then two seconds later, I trip over a body with its throat ripped," Martin said, shaking his head. "Look, man, you – you ever hear of Ockham's Razor? "Keep it simple, stupid"? It's not that complicated."

Dean leaned back against the bed frame, relaxing a little as he watched the other hunter. "There're a lot of holes, Martin."

"Holes?" Martin said disbelievingly, his gaze shifting from Dean to Sam. "The only holes we should be looking at are in the vic's neck."

"This sound like the Benny you know?" Dean said to his brother quietly.

Sam looked down for a moment and shook his head. "I don't know Benny."

"The Benny you know?" Martin's face screwed up as he looked at Dean. "Say what? Why am I getting the distinct impression that your brother is vouching for a vampire?" He shuffled sideways toward Sam, spittle coming out with the words as his agitation levels rose.

"Guys, let's not argue," Sam said quietly. This wasn't how he'd thought it would be, he thought uncomfortably. Martin was a lot more twitchy in person than over the phone.

Dean shook his head. "Nobody's arguing, but if this is Benny – and that's a big 'if' –"

"Oh, it's him," Martin interjected.

"I got history with the guy, okay?" Dean looked at Martin steadily. "I'm not signing up for a witch hunt," he added, turning to look at Sam. "I owe him more than that."

Martin shifted his feet nervously in front of Dean, as he looked between the brothers. "What in God's great creation could a Winchester possibly owe a vampire?" he said, staring at Dean. "Am I hearing this right?"

"Look, until we get the facts, we stow the bloodlust and we work this case right, or we work it separately," Dean said clearly.

"Doing it right would be separating his head from his shoulders," Martin muttered, his hands closing into fists involuntarily.

Dean straightened up and looked at Sam. "I just need some time, Sammy."

"Oh, yeah. Let the fang take another life? I don't think so."

"How much time do you need?" Sam asked, ignoring Martin.

"You're not actually considering this?" Martin turned to him.

"Couple hours, max," Dean said, his voice as quiet and low as Sam's.

Martin spun back to him. "And what if it turns out to be Benny?"

"Then it's Benny, and I'll deal with it!" Dean snapped, losing his patience with the man's fear-driven irrationality. There was nothing 'mostly okay' about Martin. He'd been burned out three years ago, burned out and scared to death, and so far as he could see, that hadn't changed.

"Couple hours, Dean. No more," Sam said, taking a step toward him.

Dean looked at him for a moment then turned away. "I'll be in touch."

He walked out of the room, hearing Martin's footsteps behind him. Martin Creaser. At least when he'd been in Glenwood, he'd understand his own fears, his own limitations, he thought sourly, pulling the door closed behind him. Now, he was over-compensating in every direction, making him not only suspect in his conclusions but dangerous to be around.

"H-hey. Oh, look. Hey, uh –" Martin followed Dean to the door, turning back as it shut in his face.

"You're joking, right? We're doing this as soon as he pulls away." He looked at Sam.

"No, we're not, Martin," Sam raised his voice as he looked at the older man. "We're gonna give him a little bit of time."

Martin backed away. "Hey, it's your brother. It's your call." He sat down in the chair next to the small table. "How long are you gonna let him go on like this? It's staring him right in the face."

Sam exhaled sharply. "Martin, shut up. You don't know anything about the situation, about what's happened or what it meant. So just … leave it."

He pulled in a breath and stalked to the window, lifting a slat on the blinds and staring out. Was he doing the right thing? Had he ever done the right thing? He thought he had – he thought he was – he had no fucking idea … "Sometimes it's not easy to see things for what they are."

* * *

Dean pulled the door closed behind him, the bells attached to it jingling quietly, and looked around briefly.

The café was plain and clean and cool, the tables widely spaced and enough customers to tell him that the food was good. _Benny slinging hash_. The thought brought a small smile as he sat down at the polished timber counter.

A tall, slender woman walked past, long nut-brown hair straight and loose over her shoulders. She put a menu down in front of him, carrying the coffee pot back to the corner of the open kitchen. Dean watched her.

"Actually, I already know what I want," he said, and she turned, walking back with the pot still in her hand as she looked at him.

She smiled. "Let me guess – gumbo?"

Dean acknowledged the hit with a half-smile. "Was gonna be the gumbo till I saw –" He looked at the pie stand at the other end of the counter and clicked his tongue. "Pie."

"Well, the special's pecan," she said, following his look.

"'Course it is," Dean said, nodding happily. Pecan. "Let's do that."

He loved Louisiana. The food. The people. The easy way of doing things. He glanced around and caught sight of the photograph, taped to the register. Benny and the girl who'd served him. The vampire looked … _happy_ … contented … he thought, a little amazed.

"Bad news," she said, stopping in front of him. He looked up at her, knowing what she was going to say.

"You're out of pecan." He looked aside with a small sigh. "Story of my life."

He rubbed a hand tiredly over his jaw. Was a trick of the universe that he didn't ever get what it was he wanted, only the next nearest thing?

"Uh, that's all right," he said, looking back at her. "Maybe you can make it up to me. I'm actually looking for an old friend of mine. I heard he's kicking around these parts. His name's Roy."

She straightened a little. "Well, Roy works the night shift here. I mean, if we're talking about the same Roy."

"Uh, yeah, he, uh, putts around in a – a beat-up camper," Dean said, trying to remember the things that distinguished Benny aside from him being a vampire. He looked up. "Thing looks like a rolling death trap."

The description surprised a laugh from her. "Yeah, I thought I was the only one who gave him trouble over that piece of junk."

She had an infectious laugh, and for a second, he had a strong wish that he didn't have to lie, could just be a friend of Roy's, down visiting, nothing else on his mind. _Stop it_, he told himself. _Never going to happen so get it out of your head_. "You wouldn't happen to know where he's parking that thing these days, would you?"

She turned away, returning the coffee pot to the burner. "Well, he, uh, was parking it out back," she said, turning back to him. "But just called to tell me he's gone up the road to Mill Creek for a few days."

"Okay. Uh, did he say why?"

She looked away blankly for a second. "Oh ... fishing … I think."

_Fishing? Right_. Dean took a slip of paper from the counter in front of him and snagged the pen from beside the register.

"He really deserves a break. He's been working doubles for the last two weeks straight," she added.

"Um, listen, I, uh, I tell you what," he said slowly, writing his name and number on the paper. "If he pops up before I can find him, you do me a favour and just have him give me a call. Or ..." He slid the paper over the counter to her and looked up with a smile. "Could just drop a dime yourself."

"Sure thing," she said, picking up the paper and reading it. "Dean."

Dean stood up. "And, uh, you are ...?"

"Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth. All right," he said. "Take a rain check on that pie."

"Definitely." She nodded, looking up at him. Her eyes were a mix of colours, he noticed suddenly, blues and greens and greys, the iris circled by a deep blue. Pretty.

He rapped his knuckles lightly against the side of the counter and turned away, walking out, feeling unaccountably more cheerful despite no Benny … and no pie as the door jingled behind him.

He headed for the car, pulling out his cell phone and dialling the vampire's number again.

"Leave a message at the beep," the vampire's soft drawl said, following by a sharp beep.

"Benny, I got a body here in Carencro with two holes in it, and I just found out you went fishing," Dean said, his face tightening as he spoke. "Do I need to tell you what this looks like?"

He pressed the end button and looked down at the phone thoughtfully. Chances were good that the vamp would have it with him. Time to go tech.

* * *

Benny stood in the close darkness and closed his phone. Dean. Here. His gaze drifted along the ground to the body a few feet away, curled on the bank, the scent of the woman's blood reeking in his nostrils.

The half-wit had called in reinforcements, and he wasn't sure if Dean being here was a good thing or not. _He'd listen_, he thought. He'd listen to what he had to say. But if he didn't believe … that would be much harder.

What they'd done together, been together, in Purgatory, defied most explanations. Brothers came closest to the bond that had grown over a year of running and fighting, back to back, no quarter given or expected. Kill or be killed, that year had been, and there'd been more than a few times that he'd thought he wasn't going to make out it with the man. It'd come as a shock to him that Dean had slowly begun to trust him, slowly begun to talk to him. There were things in the man's past that had seemed insurmountable to him. Things that couldn't be lived with, no matter what else happened. He'd seen … he'd seen … he'd seen inexplicable things. Terrifying things. Seen the hunter who'd become a friend do them.

He shook his head impatiently. Dean would listen. He would make him understand that it wasn't him, killing these people. He would have to.

* * *

The first of dawn's light was filtering through the canopies of the trees as Benny tamped down the loose soil over the grave. He looked around, listening to the bird and insect song that filled the open woods around him. He was alone.

For the moment, anyway. He picked up the shovel and walked back through the quiet woods to the truck, stopping again as he reached the clearing. He couldn't hear anything and the noises hadn't ceased. He thought he was still alone, but the awareness, born in him with the deep fill of a vampire's blood, and honed to a razor's edge over fifty years of fighting for his life, told him otherwise. Something was watching him.

The tank was little more than a deep sink, corrugated iron, holding clean water, pumped up from the stream. He put his hands into it, washing the blood and dirt from them. There was no noise, no change in the surroundings. He felt the life force of the man who stood behind him, and, as the light morning breeze shifted direction, he smelled him.

"It's not me, Dean," he said softly, staring down at the clouded water.

Behind him, Dean's deep voice was sceptical. "Now, which 'me' are we talking about – Benny? Or Roy?"

Benny picked up the towel, lying on a stump beside the tank, and dried his hands, glancing over at the hunter. Dean stood a few feet away, his face impassive, his hands behind his back.

The vampire looked down at the towel. "I'm just trying to blend in."

"Blend in?" Dean looked at the towel. Even from this distance he could see the tell-tale darker marks where the vampire was wiping off the blood that hadn't washed off. "Who'd you plant, Benny?"

"Victim number two," Benny said readily. "If you're concerned about the missed calls, I didn't want to get you involved."

He put the towel back on the stump and let his fingers touch the handle of the long, curved knife that was embedded in the top of the stump. "Now ... want to safety that thing, talk a little bit or what?"

Dean looked down at the knife and let his hands drop, the machete he held winking as a stray beam of light caught the blade.

"I'm all ears," he said, looking at Benny. He wanted an explanation. A good explanation. He wanted it more than he could have expressed in words.

Benny studied him and nodded slightly, letting his breath out in a gusty exhale as his hand dropped away from the haft of the knife.

"Rogue vamp," he said quietly. "Came into the café a couple nights ago. Youngster, goes by the name of Desmond." He looked down. "He, uh, he remembers me from the good old days."

Dean raised a brow. "The good old days?"

Benny's gaze cut away. "I know it's hard to believe, but I haven't always been this cute and cuddly," he said dryly.

"He's chasing a memory, Dean. That's all," Benny continued. "He said he was crewing up a new nest. Asked me to join up. I told him no."

"All right." Dean nodded. "So far, so good. Let's get to the part about the blood."

Benny walked slowly to the truck. "Didn't want to take no for an answer. He's trying to roust me out, leaving dead bodies in my wake till I sign up."

He leaned on the doorframe, elbow through the open window, his face becoming stony as he watched his friend taking it in. "Two bodies in two days. No amateur is gonna kick me out of my hometown, Dean. Not this time."

"Hometown? You grew up here?"

"Born and bred," Benny allowed, a flicker of pride lifting a corner of his mouth. "With Andrea gone, and you hunting again, seemed like the right time for a homecoming … you two being the only ones who keep all my ducks in a row."

He looked at Dean. "Got a regular job at the café. I even found someone to hold myself accountable to. Best kind of someone, Dean. Family."

Dean thought of the photograph in the café. How the vamp had looked it, arm casually slung around the girl. "Elizabeth."

He felt the last of his suspicions dissolve in the face of the vamp's confidence and slid the machete back into the sheath at his hip.

"My great-granddaughter," Benny said contentedly.

Dean stopped next to the trunk of a tree as the ramifications of that filtered through. "Really?"

_Crap_, he thought, wincing as his musings on Benny's great-granddaughter returned to him. No breaks. Ever. Not for him.

"Took me a while to find out, just a lucky break, really," Benny said from behind him. "Alice had been pregnant when she left, and she came back when the baby was born."

_Sure, you get the breaks_, Dean thought sourly, looking down at his feet.

Benny looked at his hunched shoulders, his brows drawing together. "Now, hold it, now. You didn't –"

"Uh, no." Dean said quickly as he turned back to the vamp.

"No," he repeated, shaking his head, mouth curling up disparagingly. He looked down as another question occurred to him. "Does she know?"

"Nah." Benny shook his head. "No, as far as she's concerned, I was just another drifter." He looked back at Dean. "I'd like to keep it that way."

"It's been tough walking the line here. After all those years in Purgatory, not having to deal with the hunger," he said, hoping that Dean would understand. It'd been more than tough, it'd been excruciating, and there'd been too many times he'd thought he wasn't going to be able to stop himself.

"But Elizabeth ... she keeps me honest." _And sane_, he thought, but didn't say out loud. She kept him feeling human. Being human, maybe. He'd thought about it a lot, the way he was, the way he could be, if he could find a key to it all. "I finally feel like I got a handle on this thing."

Dean stared at him. "Handle on things? Benny, you've got two stiffs on your hands and two hunters on your ass."

Benny turned away. "Oh, c'mon. The half-wit who found me at the café? I'll take my chances with him."

"That half-wit was sent by my brother, and trust me – my brother's not someone you want to mess with," Dean overrode him. Especially not now, he thought uneasily. Sam wasn't going to buy this. He needed … something. A leash. A stopper of some sort for him.

He watched the vampire turn back to him, nodding slowly, thoughtfully.

"I don't have time to worry about them, Dean," Benny said softly. "I didn't think Desmond had an ounce of steel in his spine, but I was wrong about that. So now I'm gonna do what I should have done two days ago, which is put him back where he belongs."

Dean buttoned up the flash of frustration he felt at the vampire's stubbornness. "You know there's only one way to do that, right? And that is for you to sit on the sideline while I convince Sam and Martin to go after Desmond," he said, hoping Benny would listen, knowing that he probably wouldn't.

"They see you out there, they don't care if you're gonna be collecting for the March of Dimes. They are gonna slice first and ask questions later. You know that."

The vampire looked at him, his expression bitter. "You really think they'll go for that?"

_They'll have to_, Dean thought, letting his breath out tiredly. He would have to convince them because there was no other way to do this. Not and have it all come out right.

"Benny, you trust me?" he asked, looking at the vampire.

"I trust you, _cher_."

* * *

"Garth? It's Dean, I need you do something for me, pretty much now," Dean drove back to the town, holding his cell against his ear.

"Anything, amigo, what's the problem?"

Dean explained what he needed. He wasn't sure he'd need to use it, but it was a hell of a lot better to be prepared than wishing you were.

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Martin said, leaning against the refrigerator, his gaze shifting between Sam and Dean.

"I follow your boy ... down a freaking path and trip over fresh vamp kill, and then you practically catch him in the act ..." He opened the 'fridge door and pulled a tray of ice cubes from the freezer. "... of burying a second body, and you're still taking his side?"

Dean dragged in a deep breath. Whatever brain Martin had gone into Glenwood with, it hadn't made the trip out with him.

"Vampires pick people off from the outskirts of town, okay?" he said, watching as Martin stabbed the tray with a fork.

"Pfffft!"

"Not in the cafés that they work in with their great-grandkids," he added, turning to look at his brother. "In fact, killing any human – it's not his style."

"Not his style?" Martin asked derisively. "Not his style?"

"Listen, Dean, we came here on a dead body," Sam said carefully. "You asked for some time, and now there's another dead body. Are we just going on trust here?"

Dean glanced over at Martin, then back to his brother. "Yes."

Sam looked at him. "Okay. Because we've killed for a lot less, and you know how these things turn out for us."

"Yes, I do – too well," Dean agreed. He knew what Sam was talking about, knew exactly what his brother was doing. "In fact, every relationship I have ever had has gone to crap at some point. But the one thing I can say about Benny – he has never let me down."

He didn't think about what he was saying until the words were out and he saw Sam's reaction.

"Huh. Well, good on you, Dean. Must feel great finally finding someone you can _trust_ after all these years," Sam said bitterly, staring at him.

He looked away, not sure if he'd meant to say it to Sam, or if it had come out on its own. It was the truth, but not the whole truth. And he'd let Sam goad him into an angry response with the veiled barb about Amy, instead of staying cool, given his brother a reason to ignore him, instead of convincing him.

"All I'm saying is that Benny is innocent," he said quietly.

"No," Sam said, getting to his feet. "You're too close to this."

Dean heard the decision in Sam's voice and looked away. He'd blown it. He stepped out in front of Sam.

"You're not gonna find him. And if you do, I'm gonna tell you this. You'll be lucky to get out alive," he said, knowing that it was a waste of his breath, needing Sam to know anyway. "And you –" he looked at Martin. "You go with him, you're a dead man – period."

Martin turned his back and drained his glass, setting it down on the nightstand. He picked up the knife that lay there, wrapping his fingers around the heavily weighted haft.

Sam looked at his brother. He wasn't going to back down on this. Bringing Martin in might've been stupid but there were bodies accumulating around Benny. "These are innocent lives we're talking about, Dean. And you're willing to risk that on Benny's word alone?"

Dean looked down, wondering if this was another chance. He would have bet his life on Benny any day or night. He would risk any number of people that the vampire had been straight with him. "Damn right I am."

Behind him, the boards creaked a little and he turned his head, sighting Martin from the corner of his eye as the hunter raised his hand and slammed his fist, with the knife in it, into Dean's temple. The protruding metal end of the haft hit the bone and he watched the elder Winchester fall to the floor. _Not so tough now_, he thought.

Sam stared at his brother's limp frame for a moment, turning to look at Martin. "What? Was that?"

"Dean m-made his choice," Martin stammered, looking at Sam worriedly. "Let's go do our job."

Sam looked back down. It solved the problem of further arguments. They would be able to finish Benny, without Dean's help or interference. And his brother had been right, he thought regretfully. Benny was the only one Dean could trust.

Martin picked up his gear bag and pulled on his jacket and hat, slinging the bag over his shoulder as he pulled the door closed behind them.

"Glad your dad wasn't around to hear that. He'd have a mind to take you both out the woodshed and show you what's what. Half inclined to do it myself," he muttered, half to himself.

Sam turned, faster than Martin could've imagined and the older man felt himself lifted slightly and slammed into the wall.

"You listen to me. I brought you into this. I can bring you out just as easy," Sam said furiously. "So the only thing you're gonna be inclined to do is shut up and follow my lead." He looked at the keys in Martin's hand and grabbed them, turning away and striding down the hall.

Was he really going to walk with out with this asshat and leave his brother lying on the floor of that room, out cold? Was that he'd come to? He shoved the thoughts aside but they returned, swooping through his justifications of killing Benny before the vampire could kill again, disrupting the smooth logic that he'd felt only a few minutes ago.

_Those weren't mistakes, Sammy. They were choices._

He didn't hear Martin's mumbled response behind him.

He pushed the front door open and looked around for Martin's ride, walking around the Impala and crossing the street. Martin hurried to catch up.

"Just saying – brother chooses a vampire over a brother? I know how I'd feel," the hunter said, his tone sharp again.

Sam stopped at the car. Was that what Dean was doing? He didn't know. It had seemed that way, a few times now, but a lifetime of Dean having his back was hard to overlook. If he was, if he had, then he deserved to be lying in the room, Sam thought, brows drawing together. But if he just trying to make sure they got the right killer, not the one he wanted it to be … did he want Benny to be a killer, so that he could kill him? Was he trying to justify revenge for Amy's death? After all this time?

Martin was still muttering to himself as he came around the rear end of the car, and Sam looked at him. This wasn't the time or the place, he thought suddenly. Martin was a loose cannon, and he'd brought him into this. He had to stay focussed. Had to stay clear, because he had the sense that Martin might turn on him next if he thought there was a weakness there.


	19. Chapter 19 Dead Man Walking

**Chapter 19 Dead Man Walking**

* * *

Sam drove automatically, his fingers curled tightly around the wheel, his gaze fixed to the road in front of the car, his mind worrying over a mish-mash of thoughts and memories that weren't making any sense, all thrown together, like a dog with a particularly large, juicy bone.

It cannot have been the right decision to leave, he thought. If it had, he wouldn't be feeling this aching longing, like a low-grade electrical charge, filling him all the time and getting worse.

_I know part of her loves me. And now ... part of her loves you. But the only one that knows what's best for Amelia is Amelia._

He'd been surprised by her husband, expecting fury or bitterness, the man had been clear in his head, rational and–and fair. It'd made him realise that no matter how much he might want to pretend that Don was a bad guy, or even the wrong guy for her, he couldn't. Don'd been thinking of what Amelia needed. Nothing else. That'd been a slap. A wake-up call.

He was distantly aware that Martin was still mumbling to himself, in the passenger seat beside him, but he was easy to tune out, to ignore. He saw the turning for the backwoods road and slowed down, hearing the pop and crunch as the tyres rolled over the gravel. Two or three miles along, Dean'd said.

And Don had reminded him a little of his brother, he recognised, a touch bitterly. Dean had that same wide streak of justice running through him. Dean would turn away from what he wanted if it was the right thing to do. Wouldn't look back. Would bury his feelings and never show them again. He remembered clearly what his brother done, asking Cas to remove the memories of him from Lisa and Ben.

There was a difference, he thought suddenly. His brother had spent his entire life believing that he would never get what he wanted, had hardened himself to that idea. It was a difference – _one of the many_, he amended – between them. He still believed that he could have what he longed for. Had found it. Didn't want to give it up. Did that make it right or wrong?

* * *

Dean woke to a throbbing ache in his head, the jingle and sharp bite of metal around his wrist and the raw, scraping knowledge that whatever happened now, he was on his own.

He opened an eye and looked around, knowing that the room was empty. He could feel stickiness on the side of his face, and he lifted his free hand, the fingertips coming away red. Sonofabitch had hit him pretty hard. He was cuffed to the gas fitting, he saw when he lifted his head gingerly and turning to look. They'd taken his jacket and it lay on the bed, a few feet away. Might as well have been on the fucking moon for all the good it could do him.

Pushing himself slowly upright, he eased himself back against the wall, shifting to one hip and digging in his back pocket for the over-sized paper clip he habitually carried there. _Not much of a search, boys_, he thought as his fingertips snagged the smooth metal wire. Or maybe Sam hadn't thought of it. Whatever.

He bent it out with his teeth and slid the end into the lock, feeling for the latch.

"Come on," he muttered softly to the cuff, swivelling his wrist around again. He could feel it, but it was stiff. Sometimes it was easier to do by feel. Sometimes not, he thought, looking down at the recalcitrant metal bracelet. There was a slight ratcheting sound and he lifted, pulled the arm free and letting the clip and cuff fall to the floor as he rolled onto his knees and got up.

He picked up the phone and dialled Benny's number, picking up his jacket and pulling it on one-handed as he listened to it ring. "Pick up, man."

"_What'd they say?"_ Benny said without preamble.

"They didn't go for it," Dean answered, yanking at his shirt under the shoulders of the jacket to settle it. "They're on their way to you. I'd get scarce."

_"No offence, Dean, but your little brother doesn't exactly put chills up my spine,"_ Benny's tone was gently mocking.

"Benny, listen to me," he said, going to the sink and grabbing a towel from the edge. "Do not underestimate my little brother, okay? He can and will kill you given the chance." He looked at the blood on the side of his head and wiped at it.

_"All right. So, what now?"_

Dean turned away from the mirror and headed for the door. "I go find Desmond."

_"You take me with."_

"Hey, I just told you – best thing you can do is lay low." Dean scowled as he walked down the hall, veering to the right to avoid the cart of the cleaning lady coming up the other way.

_"That ain't gonna work this time, cher,"_ Benny said, the drawl more pronounced. _"You take me with, or I don't tell you where he is."_

Dean frowned as he strode down the hall. "You know where he is?"

_"He said he's not gonna stop the killing till I join his little nest. Two bodies are enough. I told him I'm in."_

Dean pushed open the front door, relieved to see the car still parked right outside. "Benny," he said warningly.

_"Dean, this is my fight,"_ Benny said. _"Are you in or are you out?"_

_Nothing was ever easy_, Dean thought as he stood beside the black car. _Alright, Plan B_.

"I'm in."

* * *

Sam looked around the clearing in frustration. The tyre tracks leading in – and out – had been fresh. There were still clothes hanging on the makeshift rope line suspended between a couple of the saplings. But the vampire had gone, and probably a while ago, he thought.

"Something spooked him," Martin said softly, the point of his machete swinging back and forth as he stared around. His gaze stopped as he saw the light square on the ground, and he walked to it, bending to pick up the scrap of paper.

Sam's phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out. The message was bright against the darkness and he stared at it disbelievingly.

_No._

His reaction was immediate and without thought. He turned and ran soundlessly from the clearing, wrenching open the door of the station wagon and twisting the key frantically.

"Sam," Martin looked up from the small photograph of Roy and Elizabeth he held and looked around. "Sam!"

He started to run, hearing the vehicle shift into gear as he broke free of the woods and barrelled onto the road. "Sam! SAM!"

Martin watched the taillights of his car disappear around the next bend, and hunched into his coat. "Winchesters. Mad!"

His fingers tightened around the machete in his hand and he looked down the dark ribbon of tar apprehensively. Just leave him here, he thought, in the middle of a vamp's territory, in the middle of the night. If they'd wanted to kill him, why not just shoot him? At least that would've been quick.

Pulling his collar higher around his neck, he started walking.

* * *

The Impala grumbled as he drove her along the rough gravel road, headlights showing the boats tied up alongside the river bank, then the rust and dents of the vampire's camper. He stopped and turned off the engine, picking up the machete on the seat beside him as he got out and looked at Benny.

"What is this place?" he asked, walking back to the trunk and opening it.

Benny looked around. "Boat-builders yard," he said, gesturing at the large building behind the vehicles. "They do some small work here, mechanical repairs. Building's a mess, a lot of shadows to hide in."

'_Course it was_, Dean thought caustically, picking up the shotgun that held up the false floor and propping it in place. He unrolled a soft case and pulled out a syringe of blood from the dozen tucked into the cloth pockets, checking the amount and the cover. The syringe went into his jacket pocket. "So, what's the plan? I hang back while you guys do some trust falls and binge-drinking?"

Behind him, Benny laughed softly. "Man, if I didn't know you better, I'd say you have an extremely low opinion of us vamps."

Dean snorted, closing the trunk and looking over his shoulder at him. "Call it healthy scepticism."

* * *

The door opened easily and Dean walked in, taking point. Benny hadn't exaggerated, he thought, looking around the chaotic workshop. Marine engines, outboards, stacks of lumber, piles of rope, cans and drums of god-knew-what stacked around the wall and along the floor space. Hide-and-seek was going to be real interesting in here.

Benny moved out to his left, turning the flashlight off and ghosting across the board floor. Dean walked straight ahead, his soles silent, his feet automatically testing and shifting on the timber floor. His gaze swept the rooms, not focussed on anything in particular, following the beam of his flashlight and looking for movement. Compared to Purgatory, night hunting here was a piece of cake, generally speaking. Even in the darkest of places there was almost always a little ambient light, enough for his eyes to see differences.

He stopped and turned as he felt the air behind him change, the flashlight raking the walls and floor at the end of the room. Something had moved. Soundless but still discernible. He was aware that the razor-sharpness of his senses had been dulling steadily since he'd gotten out. They were still better than any other human he knew of, but they weren't as sensitive as they'd been down in the land of monsters. He didn't know what he could do about it, if there was anything he could do about it.

The faint breeze that played over the river came in through the door they'd left open, and he stopped as the scent wafted past him. Rotting flowers and rotten meat.

He spun around, the machete's broad blade singing as it split the air in a shallow curve, the edge precisely in line with the vampire's neck. His wrist creaked as it was met by the vamp's forearm, the block like hitting a tree, numbing his arm from fingertips to shoulder.

Dean's eyes narrowed as he dropped the point, aiming for the vampire's chest and seeing the tip tear through the white shirt, feeling it skate over the ribs. The vampire roared and he was in the air, keeping the arm holding the machete out wide as he hit the floorboards, the back of his head smacking hard into the wood. The light bent in front of him and he let go of the blade as knees hit his chest, driving the air from his lungs, his hands scrabbling on the smooth leather of the vampire's jacket as fingers closed around the neck of his coat, lifting and slamming him down onto the floor again.

The vampire stilled, looking down at him. "Benny never told me he was bringing a friend."

Dean caught a glimpse of a young man's face, dirty blonde hair falling over it, dark eyes set deep in shadowed sockets as the creature's breath gusted over his face and he had to breathe it in.

"You're not gonna talk a lot, are you?" he asked, keeping one hand on the vampire's wrists while the other searched frantically for the syringe in his pocket. He found the end and drew it out, flicking the cap off with a thumbnail. "I've been dealing with crazy all day."

It's hand caught his fist as he drove the syringe toward its chest, and he shifted under it, swinging his weight over to one hip. For a second, he thought he'd made it, the vamp's knee sliding off his chest, its weight listing to one side, then its fingers closed tightly around his hand and he felt the syringe shatter against his palm, the bones of his fingers and hand ground together, the grip of the monster an inexorably tightening vice.

It regained its balance and released his hand, slashing a fingernail across his neck, the biting sting of the cut counterpoint to the suspected broken finger or fingers he could feel throbbing in his hand. _Move your fucking head_, he told himself furiously, _or there's going to be more than a goddamned scratch on your neck_.

The vampire's breath was on him, hot and moist over his skin and Dean pushed against the chest futilely, waiting for the bite. Then it was gone, and he saw the flicker of Benny's blade in the dim light, rolling himself sharply to the side as the head fell toward him. It bounced away on impact, and he let himself roll back.

"Son of a ... it took you long enough," Dean wheezed, trying to get a deep breath back into his lungs. _Just bruising_, he thought sourly. Ribcage and underneath, from the vamp's crash landing on him.

"You've lost a step, friend." Benny looked down at him thoughtfully, stretching out his hand, and pulling Dean to his feet. "You need to lay off the junk food."

Dean's retort died as the cut in his neck stretched open and he lifted his head, touching his fingertips lightly to it and grimacing at the sharp stab of pain.

Benny stared at it, the blood bright red against the skin, the sweetish-biting coppery scent flooding his nose, the sound of Dean's heart, pounding in his chest, loud in his ears. Inside his mouth, he felt the teeth descend a little, a flush of heat flux through his body.

Dean's gaze shifted from the blood on his fingers to the vampire beside him. Benny's gaze was fixed on his neck, the vampire's lips twitching slightly. He'd seen that stare before. Seen that hunger before.

"You okay?" he asked warily, his fingers tightening involuntarily around the haft of his machete.

Benny's gaze lifted incrementally to meet Dean's.

"I'm fine," the vampire slurred and forced himself to turn, to walk slowly away from the man whose blood was calling to him, whose heartbeat was so loud he could hardly hear anything else.

Dean watched him go. _Nothing was ever easy_, he thought uneasily. _And it would be worse, now, for Benny_.

* * *

The night air was still, the vagaries of the river breeze had died and the water that flowed slowly between the banks was smooth.

Dean saw the vampire standing by the fence and walked to him, holding the mostly clean cloth over the scratch on his neck. He could move his fingers, so he'd gotten lucky there. The pain of dragging in a deep breath had slowly eased, no ribs broken or fractured. Still young enough to take a hundred and fifty pounds dropping onto him, he thought with an inward humourless laugh.

"My life here is over, isn't it?" Benny said softly, staring through the chain link to the distantly twinkling lights of the town.

"Afraid so," Dean confirmed, hearing the resignation in Benny's voice. "Once word gets out ... the machete swingers that'll come for you – you can't take them all. It's impossible. And even if you could ...," he let the end of that sentence remain unfinished.

Benny nodded. "We'd have a problem."

Dean looked away. They would. He knew what the vampire was facing – was trying to face. A life lived on the run, always moving, always the stranger, the outcast. It was the same for him. He might pretend to himself, every once in a while, that there was more, but it was just a dream, just a little dream to soften the ragged edges when everything else looked too bleak. It would never happen for him. And it would never happen for Benny.

"Guys like us, we don't get a home," he said, tasting the gall of those words even as they came out. "We don't get family."

"You got Sam," Benny said, an edge of wistfulness to his voice.

Dean closed his eyes. No, he didn't, he wanted to tell the vampire. Not any more. _My brother … will always be my brother_. But he wasn't sure that they were still family. Blood wasn't enough. And Sam … he pushed it aside, shoved it down.

"Yeah."

He drew in a breath. "Benny, you got to go deep underground, where nobody knows who you are."

Benny nodded, turning to him. "Yeah. I got one last thing I got to do."

Dean knew what that was. The vampire was very human, filled with human feelings, human desires. How many more heartbreaks could he face, he wondered, looking down as Benny walked away, before that humanity was burned out of him? He tipped his head back, looking at the stars in the blackness over him. Probably not too many more. Not too many more at all.

* * *

_**I-40, Louisiana**_

Nine or ten hours, Sam thought, lifting his hand from the wheel and shaking his fingers, trying to loosen the tension in them. At the minimum. He glanced to the seat beside him and picked up his phone, thumb hitting the number without the need to look.

"_The person you are trying to reach is unavailable."_

_Fuck!_ He threw the phone onto the seat and heard it bounce off onto the floor. He was too far. She'd said '_come quick_' … nine hours wasn't quick. He pushed his foot down harder and the wagon accelerated along the smooth road. Why was her phone off? Or was she moving around? What the hell could've happened?

_Don't_, he warned himself tersely. _Don't speculate. Just switch off until you get there or you'll be a mess and not fit to take care of whatever it is_. But his thoughts wouldn't slow down, wouldn't back off, wouldn't stay contained.

_This morning, you and I were the right thing, remember?_

Pain flowered in his chest, as the memory returned. He hadn't given her the time she'd asked for, had just decided for both of them. Had it been the right thing? Or should he have stayed, fought for her? How the fuck was he supposed to know what the right fucking thing was?

_You took the easy way out, Sam._

No, he hadn't. He'd wanted to give them a chance.

_It was still easier for you, to go, to not have to see it, see them. To make her think that you could leave so she wouldn't know how badly it was all hurting._

No. That wasn't why he'd gone, he argued, teeth clenched tightly together. He didn't have any rights in this situation. She needed to make a choice without being distracted.

_You told her you'd come back._

And he was. Going back. The speedometer rose a little more. Just as fast as he could get there.

The signs for Shreveport flashed by and he eased back a little, looking for the bypass.

* * *

The café was lit up, the interior clearly visible as Benny stood by his truck, watching. She moved so gracefully, he thought, watching her smile and turn, put the dishes down and tilt her head back slightly as she laughed.

All he'd wanted was to stay here and watch over her. Make sure she stayed safe and happy. That's all. It didn't seem like much of an ambition. But it had kept him calm. Kept the hunger far away.

The smell of Dean's blood, the sound of his heart, had been a reminder. Perhaps any ambition was too much of a reach. Perhaps he would give in to that hunger one day, and that would be the end. Back to Purgatory for eternity. Knowing he'd never get out again. Knowing that as the time passed he would care less about fighting, about surviving and would turn into one of those pathetic creatures that were preyed on by the others.

And for what? He turned and looked at the man who stood a couple of feet from him, the contentment that had been in his face, gone.

"Why'd your brother send that hunter to find me?"

Dean closed his eyes. It was the question that he'd hoped Benny would overlook. He turned to look at the vampire.

"I don't know, not exactly," he said quietly, looking at the brightly lit room in front of him.

"But you have an idea," Benny pressed. "You have a pretty good idea."

Dean looked at him. "There was a lot about my life, about me and Sam, I didn't tell you, and … yeah, it's made problems. Some of those problems, most of those problems, were my fault, not Sam's."

"Don't," Benny said abruptly. "You can lie to yourself, _cher_, but don't lie to me."

Dean sighed. "It doesn't matter, Benny." He gestured around them vaguely. "It's done. Nothing can undo what's been done. Not now."

The vampire studied him for a long moment. "I was wrong about you having family, wasn't I?"

"Yeah," Dean said, looking away. "I told you, we don't get to have family."

Benny turned away, looking back into the interior of the café. "As long as she's alive, and safe, and happy, I got family, Dean."

He turned back, holding out his hand. Dean took it, feeling the vamp's fingers tighten slightly around his own.

"Thanks for not giving up on me, brother."

"Don't give me a reason to," Dean said. The warning was there, and both knew that it was probably only a matter of time before their friendship would face a real test. A test of loyalties and honour, of trust and their reasons for living.

The vampire smiled slightly and walked to his truck, opening the door and getting in. Dean moved off the drive as the engine started and the lights came on, holding out a hand as Benny drove past.

He looked back at the brightly lit room. Standing outside, in the dark, looking in at the life and movement inside. His mouth twisted up on one side in a derisive smile as he turned and walked to the car.

He'd had a taste of normal. It had been what had changed him the most, he thought. Had been what had forced him into growing up. That year, with its stultifying boredom, the frustration and fury of not being able to find anything to help Sam, the agonies of knowing – or believing that he'd known – what had been happening to his brother. Unable to face it. Unable to stop it. Unable to feel any of the things he'd thought he'd wanted. Normal had come at too high a cost and the benefits hadn't outweighed the pain.

His brother had destroyed Benny's hopes of being able to sublimate his hunger in the easy life he'd found here. The vampire might be able to let that go, or he might not. He didn't know. He didn't know what he might be forced to do if that came up.

He hadn't been lying when he'd told Benny that a lot of what was driving Sam was his fault, he thought, starting the engine. He should've done a lot of things differently with his brother. But he hadn't, and where they were was where they were. He couldn't see a way of changing anything now. He glanced at his watch. Sam would be across into Texas by now. Another six or seven hours before he got to Kermit.

Twisting the key, listening critically to the engine as it rumbled into life, he thought about the other thing he had to do. He pulled out of the café's parking lot and turned onto the road, then picked up his phone, punching in the numbers. He listened to it ring.

"_Hey, Dean_," Martin said.

"Look, I'm just calling to let you know that the situation is resolved. Benny was not lying. There was another vamp, and we ganked him," he said. "Together."

"_Oh. That's good, Dean_."

Dean frowned at the tone in the hunter's voice. A little sing-song, like he wasn't paying attention. Or was out of it.

"Yeah, shut up and listen to me. Benny's long gone, and he won't be coming back, ever," he said, his voice deepening slightly. "So for your own sake, do not follow him. Are we clear?"

"_You don't have to worry about me, Dean. I'm long gone, too._"

_I hope so_, Dean thought sourly. "Oh, and Martin?"

"_Yeah?_"

"Find a new line of work."

He hit the end button and put the phone on the seat beside him.

* * *

Martin looked at the phone in his hand. _Goddamned Winchesters and their high-and-mighty decisions_, he thought blackly.

One of them stealing his car – his _car_ – and leaving him in the middle of the swamp to walk back to town with a known vampire hunting here. And the other telling him what he could and couldn't do, hunting with a vamp, protecting a vamp, as if that was all hunky-dory and perfectly normal.

_Only hunter here was him_, he thought, staring ahead at the black road, his fingers tightening around his machete hilt.

Well, the vamp wasn't going to get away with it. And Dean Winchester couldn't tell him to find another job with that smooth-as-silk threat in his voice. He'd take the vamp down and go – and go – and go north somewhere, he thought. Or south, maybe. Somewhere else, anyway.

If he got his car back. He frowned. He could take Benny's camper, once the vamp was dead. Get himself over to San Antonio and get it fixed up. He nodded to himself, satisfied by the idea.

* * *

Benny turned right automatically, following the small roads north and slightly west. He had it mind to head for San Diego, pick up a job somewhere on the coast. He could work crew for any vessel, pleasure or commercial, maybe leave the country and see what the rest of the world had to offer. He needed something, some plan.

The shrill ring of the phone shattered his thoughts and he pulled out the cell from his pocket, flipping it open and looking at the screen.

"Hey, Liz," he said softly. "How's your shift going?"

"_Mm. I'd say she's covering for you just fine ... Benny. But us regulars – we miss you_."

He knew the voice. The half-wit hunter who'd brought down this misery down on him, driven him out of his town and his home and away from his family.

_No._

"Who is this?" Benny asked, struggling to keep his hand from crushing the phone.

"_I think you know who this is_," Martin said quietly.

"How the hell you get her phone?" He looked down at the dash, calculating the distance he'd come from the café.

In the background, he heard her voice, warm and alive. "_You enjoy the cherry?"_

_"No! Sorry. Not quite done yet."_

Benny tensed at the tone in the hunter's voice, his hearing straining to hear everything that was happening there, his imagination filling his mind with images he didn't want to see.

"_Oh. Did you, uh, reach your friend okay?_"

He could hear the nervousness in her voice, not overt but underneath, as if she could sense that the hunter was trouble, but couldn't work out how much yet. He pushed his foot down on the brake pedal and came to a stop.

"_I did. Thanks_," Martin said, his voice soft and conciliatory now. "_I can't believe I left my cell on the bus. Wife says I'd lose my own head if it wasn't screwed on. I'll just be another minute_."

"_Well, you take your time_."

A little of the nervousness had gone from her as she'd moved away, Benny thought uneasily. She was so vulnerable. She believed the best in people. Such an easy target for a monster.

"_Thank you_," Martin said, and under the voice he heard the scrape of a fork over the thick china of the café's plates. "_She's a nice girl. Takes kindly to strangers_."

"You leave her alone. Now," Benny ground out. He shoved hard against the thought of what the hunter might have it mind to do.

"_How far away are you?_"

"An hour," Benny said.

"_You got forty-five minutes_," Martin told him.

The vampire shut the phone and turned the wheel sharply, hearing the screak of the low branches beside the road scraping over the camper roof as he forced the turn on the narrow road.

* * *

The café was dark and Benny drove straight up to the porch, turning off the engine and lights and getting out without any effort at silence or stealth. The hunter held the cards, for now. He couldn't think of a way to take him down without knowing the situation first.

He stepped onto the porch and reached for the screen door, pulling it wide and opening the door behind it, gaze shifting smoothly around the room as he looked for her.

He saw her as he closed the door, the bells jingling beside him. She was close by the counter, tied to a chair, staring at him, her face frightened and bewildered. He took a breath, forcing his fear away.

"Lay down your arms, you unholy thing!" Martin said loudly, his head appearing from behind Elizabeth as he rose from his crouch. Benny stopped, spreading his arms slightly wide, hands open, watching the man settle a long knife against Liz's throat.

"You got me here now," Benny said, moving around the table between them slowly. "Why don't you just let her go and walk away?"

"I don't think so."

Benny looked at him. "You realize I'm not asking."

"I realize that completely," Martin said, his voice shaking slightly.

In the chair, Elizabeth lifted her head a little higher as the edge of the knife pressed against her skin, her breath catching as she stared at him. "Roy, what's going on?"

"It's okay, Lizzie," Benny said, edging closer to the counter. "He ain't gonna hurt you. Ain't that right?"

He shifted his gaze to Martin, seeing the way the man's hand gripped Liz's shoulder, fingers curled into claws and still shaking. "Come on now. I got no beef with you. You got no beef with me."

"I got plenty of beef with your kind," Martin snarled, the edge of the knife trembling against the woman's throat.

"All right," Benny allowed softly. "That may be so, but not for anything that happened here. I did not kill those people."

"I heard," Martin said. "You and Dean had a little Purgatory reunion. Touching."

Benny looked at him, watching the hunter trying to cover his fear with anger, trying to find something that would burn inside of him, work him up enough to be able to attack. Had a hell of a beef with Dean and his brother, he thought distantly, wondering how much of that was driving what he was doing now.

"Roy ... please just tell me what's going on here," Elizabeth said, her gaze flicking from side to side helplessly. Benny felt his chest constrict at her fear.

He looked back to Martin, not caring that he was going to beg, to plead, only caring that she walked out, alive. "Please. I'm asking you – do not do this. The bad guy is gone, okay?"

"She doesn't know ...," Martin said wonderingly as he watched the vampire. "Benny."

_Don't_, he said, inside of himself, knowing it showed on his face. _Please. Don't_. He saw the hunter see it and smile.

"Roy?" She looked up at him, bewildered. "Who's Benny?"

"Who's Benny?" Martin asked, an edge of hysteria in his voice. "Let's find out, shall we?"

He crouched behind the chair, hand fisted in the shoulder of her sweater and hair, the carving knife scraping against her skin, as the vampire got slowly closer.

"You- you stay back!" he yelled, drawing the blade in a short slice over the side of Elizabeth's neck.

Benny smelled the blood as the skin opened. It was, to him, a rich and complex smell, living blood, filled with oxygen and minerals, filled with the life of the human, intoxicating and irresistible and maddening.

Both Liz and Martin were glowing with light, the details of their skin, the weave and weft of the fabric of their clothing, every hair, every line, every edge of flesh and muscle and tendon, delineated in light to his eyes.

"Look," Martin said to Elizabeth. "See that?! Dilated pupils! Hair standing! Signs of hunger!"

The vampire turned away as he felt his fangs descend. He could hear the beating of their hearts, Liz's a little slower than Martin's. He could hear the rush of the blood through their veins and the slurring hiss of their sweat, sliding down their skin. He could hear the creak of the tendons in Martin's hand, as he gripped the knife. Could hear the elastic twang of his great-granddaughter's muscles as she tensed in the chair.

The hunger pulled at him, raking his organs with claws of fire, burning through his blood vessels with the vicious bite of acid, crackling along his nervous system, a lit fuse that would detonate everything he'd struggled and bled and killed to have.

"Don't worry," Martin said to Elizabeth, his voice booming in Benny's ears. "He won't feed off his own flesh and blood."

"Flesh and blood?" she repeated in confusion, and Benny tipped his head back, the cords and muscles of his body standing out in bold relief as he tried to hold back the hunger.

Martin straightened, standing up behind her, watching the vampire as his voice filled with triumph. "Tell her, Benny. Tell her how you're her long-lost grandpappy. Tell her about all the dead you left behind. Tell her about the monster that you are!"

_Over._

The single word penetrated deeply and it short-circuited everything else. Rage and hunger disappeared together, washed away by a sorrow that felt too big for his mind or body to hold. He'd dreamed of love, in the flat grey land on another plane. And that had gone, its memory stained forever when he'd seen her again and she'd been hard and pale and perfect, but not herself. He'd dreamed of contentment, of a life lived small, filled with the moments of happiness from just knowing that he shared something with one other person.

Now that was gone too.

The fangs retracted as the hunger dissolved in his pain and he turned back to Martin, no trace of fight left in him.

"What do you want?"

"Isn't it obvious? I want your head on a stake," Martin snarled, drawing a machete from the sheath behind his hip.

Benny nodded, walking to the counter top and bending, laying his head on the smooth wooden surface. He looked at Liz, hoping that he could take that memory down with him, remember every detail.

"Oh ... Roy, no," Elizabeth stared at him, blinking away the tears that filled her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Benny whispered to her. He'd wanted her to be safe. He'd wanted to be left alone. He'd never gotten what he'd wanted. Her face was full of regret, full of sorrow and he felt himself, the old part of himself, the human part of himself, reaching out to her, to tell her it would be okay, maybe. He didn't know.

"Well, hope they're saving a special place for you –", Martin said, picking his way around the chair to the end of the countertop. "– wherever it is you come from."

He leaned forward, sweeping the pie plate off the end as he lunged forward, the machete's blade hissing down.

Benny kept his eyes on Liz. He saw her rise slightly in the chair, her mouth open in a scream, saw her shift her weight into the hunter.

"No!"

* * *

_**Kermit, Texas**_

Sam pulled over onto the verge, cutting the engine and the headlights and coasting to a stop outside of the house. He racked the slide on the Taurus, loading a round into the chamber and opened the door silently, latching it but not closing it fully.

He'd made good time, and it was still dark, although dawn wasn't too far away. He slipped in through the driveway gate and made his way around the house, hesitating when he saw the light shining from the living room window, the curtains only partly drawn, the brightness spilling onto the lawn in front of him.

He walked over to the window, careful to avoid the light and looked in. Don sat alone on the long, red sofa, the coffee table in front of him holding a couple of glasses, resting on coasters. Sam straightened up slightly as he watched the other man shift to the edge, leaning forward and hunching up slightly.

From the side of the room, Amelia came in, carrying a longneck. She walked around the coffee table and sat down next to Don, handing him the beer. Sam saw Don lift his hand, taking the bottle and setting it down on the table, reaching out and gently pushing a loose strand of dark curl back off her face. He saw her lift her hand and cover her husband's, her expression warm with feeling, her eyes fluttering closed as she held his hand against her skin.

_Not in trouble_. The thought flitted through Sam's mind irrelevantly. His heart ached as he recognised the tableau. He and Amelia had sat up, all night long, talking. Learning about each other. An intimacy he'd luxuriated in. He turned away from the intimacy inside the room, and walked back to the car, his thumb automatically finding the safety on his gun and flicking it back on.

He got into the car and put the gun back in the glove box, then sat, staring at the wheel. He'd driven nine hours straight, breaking every speed limit in between Carencro and Kermit to get here, to save her. To be with her. What'd that tell him?

Leaving hadn't been the right thing to do – for him. But maybe, he thought, remembering her smile, the way her lashes had fluttered down, maybe it had been for her. He'd told her, before he'd left, that she'd saved him. It'd been the truth. She had. He thought he might've saved her too. Stopped her from heading a more destructive path than she'd already been on. He wasn't too sure about that. But he'd been running blind when he'd hit Riot, and that would've gone on until he'd stopped taking precautions, stopped caring, stopped thinking at all.

It wasn't enough. She'd stopped the headlong rush but all the problems that had driven him, they were all still there. A lifetime of choices. Of things that bent him and twisted him and distorted him until he didn't know who he was. He'd thought he did. Thought that the core Sam, the real Sam, had never changed. But when he looked back, when he looked back to Stanford or even the year of trying to find his father … he wasn't the same as he'd been then. Things that he'd taken for granted were still there, they weren't, not anymore. He wasn't sure when, exactly, they'd disappeared but he couldn't feel that strength in himself anymore. That surety of knowing what was right and what was wrong. And he knew he'd had that. Back then.

* * *

_**Carencro, Louisiana**_

"No!" Elizabeth screamed, adrenalin flooding her body as she thrust down with her feet and tipped the chair into the man beside her.

"Fucking bitch!"

She lay on her side on the floor, her weight resting on one arm where it was tied behind the chair, and looked up in terror as the man staggered back toward her, the long carving knife winking in the dim light, its sharp point aimed at her.

A deep, guttural roar filled the room and he was gone, so fast that she wasn't sure that she hadn't lost consciousness for a moment. Somewhere behind her she could hear the roar rise and fall, the sounds moving around her, the crash of furniture knocked over, broken and splintered and screechingly shoved aside across the wooden floors, the man's voice, louder and softer … and a scream cut hideously short, sticky, wet sounds - sounding incongruously like someone mopping a floor. She could smell the reek of blood, a lot of blood, filling the air.

Her hair was over one side of her face and she tried to twist around when she heard the footfall behind her. The rope around her wrists tightened for a second then fell free and the chair was pulled away from her, a hand, slick and wet, gripping her own, and pulling her up.

Roy stood there, holding her hand, looking at her, his face and neck and chest covered with blood. She looked, unseeing, at the rents and tears in his shirt and coat, at the deep wounds that patterned his chest, the long, thin line halfway up his neck. Her gaze skittered down past him to the floor, and she saw legs, lying there, unmoving.

"Liz," Benny said. "I'm so sorry." He let go of her hand as he saw what she was looking at.

She shook her head, looking back up at him. It was still Roy – the sad, gentle eyes and the wry, gentle humour and the solid, reliable strength of him. She watched him lift his arm, wiping the blood from his face, could see the stain of it, caught in his stubble, in the cracks and lines on his face.

"W-w-was what he said true, Roy?" she asked, searching his face. The man had sounded so sure, but he'd been a madman, hadn't he? A-a-a psychopath, escaped from somewhere?

Benny looked down and sighed. He could lie now, and she would believe him. She wanted to believe, he could see it in her eyes. But lies had a bad habit of rising, down the line.

Lifting his head, he looked into her eyes, his expression unknowingly softening as he committed them to memory, to the deepest safety of his mind.

"Yeah, Liz, it's true."

Elizabeth looked down at the body on the floor, feeling her legs wobbling, her shoulders trembling. Benny saw it too and he stepped forward unthinkingly, wrapping her in his arms, holding her tightly for a moment.

"I'm goin'," he said against her hair. "You won't have this kind of trouble again."

He stepped back, grimacing inwardly as he saw that he'd covered her in blood. She followed his gaze, looking down at her front and then up again. And he was gone. A moment later the engine started out the front and she turned slowly to see the truck back up and turn, pulling out of the lot and back onto the road, taillights shining red against the blackness of the night.

* * *

The road was a two lane blacktop and Dean drove west, his fingers tapping lightly on the wheel as the song played. He sang softly along with the chorus, his voice husky, feeling all right tonight.

His phone rang twice before he registered the sound over the music, and he picked it up off the seat, glancing at the caller.

"Yeah?"

_"Dean?"_

"Hang on." He could barely hear the voice on the other end, and he shifted the phone to his left, reaching out to turn the stereo down. "Elizabeth?"

_"Y-you told me to call you if I saw ... him,"_ she said, her voice high and shaking.

"What do you mean? Roy? Is – is he there right now?" Dean asked. "Elizabeth, what's going on?"

There was a silence on the other end of the line for a moment and he heard her voice lift higher. _"Just come."_

Dean dropped the phone and spun the wheel, stamping on the brake as the car began to turn, the back end sliding smoothly out and completing the u-turn under the weight of the car. He pushed down on the accelerator and the Impala surged forward, straightening out as he headed back to town, the engine revs rising as his foot pressed harder.

* * *

The headlights lit up the building as he turned onto the road, and he saw her sitting on the porch steps. In the wash of the beams, her face looked white, but it might have been just the contrast to the brilliance of the red that soaked her clothes, covered her chest and hands. Dean stopped the car and got out, walking quickly toward her, slowing as he saw her expression.

She was staring straight ahead, holding her phone in one hand. She pointed behind her to the doorway, and he glanced at the dark interior then back to her. She was covered in blood, but he didn't think it was hers, at least not all of it. Along the side of her neck, a short, thin cut was still bleeding slightly, and he pulled a small cloth from his pocket, pressing it against the cut on her neck until her hand lifted and held it there for herself.

_What the fuck had happened here?_

Dean walked up the steps, past Elizabeth and opened the screen door. The main door was already open, pushed wide, and he looked at the pools and smears of blood that patterned the floor, moving slowly inside. Chairs and tables had been overturned, white china gleamed in the beam of his flashlight, shards scattered over the floor. The blood trail led to the back of the room, behind the counter.

He saw the legs first; dark jeans, work boots, and slowed as he looked around the end of the counter, seeing the distinctive plaid shirt, and the pool of blood that surrounded it. Martin lay on his back, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. Just under the jaw, there was a long, straight cut, but below that, the man's neck had been torn apart, the cartilage of the windpipe ripped out, the sinews to either side gleaming white, shining in the flashlight's beam against the dark red and black of the rent flesh. A carving knife, perhaps eight inches long, lay at one edge of the blood pool, most of its length red.

The volume of blood that had spread out from the body was at least four quarts, Dean estimated automatically, taking into account had much had been soaked up by the clothing. Benny hadn't drained him. He didn't know what that meant. He glanced over his shoulder at the woman still sitting motionless on the steps. She would know, if he could get her to talk about it.

Before he even thought of that, he had another job to get done first. He walked back to the porch, and crouched down beside Elizabeth.

"I need to clean this up," he said quietly to her. "I need a tarp or a sheet, or a blanket."

She turned to look at him slowly, and nodded. Dean straightened up and held his hand out, pulling her to her feet as she took it.

* * *

He lit the fire behind the café, using the furniture too broken to be repaired, packing crates and soaking it all with a can of gasoline that Elizabeth kept out the back for burning the rubbish. When the debris had been cleared away and the body wrapped up and taken outside, she'd started to come out of the shock, filling a bucket with hot water and detergent and taking an old-fashioned scrubbing brush, getting down on her knees to wash the floors. There'd been something in her face when she'd done it, something hard and private and filled with pain, and she'd ignored him standing there watching, so he'd left her to it.

The flames had died down and the bones were indistinguishable from the charred timbers and Dean turned and walked back around the building. Inside, a couple of lights were on, the room smelling strongly of equal parts detergent and disinfectant. Elizabeth sat at the counter, both hands curled around a cup of coffee, staring at the grill.

Dean walked over to her, wincing inwardly when he saw that she was still covered in blood.

"You got any spare clothes here?" he asked, leaning on the counter next to her. She looked up at him blankly for a moment then looked down at herself and nodded slowly.

"Get them," he said gently, gesturing to the restrooms on the other side of the room. "Get cleaned up."

He'd burn her clothes on the remains of the fire, he thought distractedly, looking around the room. A few less tables but it looked reasonably clean, ordered.

Elizabeth came out, her hair damp and pulled back from her face, her skin slightly reddened from being scrubbed. She sat down at the counter and Dean retrieved the bloodied clothes from the restroom, taking them out to the fire and throwing them on.

"You – you know all about this, don't you?" she asked him as he came back into the room.

He shrugged, pouring himself a coffee from the pot she'd made and sitting on the seat next to her.

"I know some of it," he hedged, turning to face her. "Can you tell me what happened, here?"

"That man …," she started and stopped, looking down at her cup. "He grabbed me, just before closing."

Dean watched her silently as she told him about it in fits and starts. What she could remember. What she'd heard. What she'd seen. The pieces fit together and he sipped his coffee, forcing the hot liquid down his throat when he felt himself tensing up.

"Was Roy a monster, Dean?" she asked, finally looking at him. He forced himself to meet those eyes.

"He was more human than most people I've met," he said. "But yeah, he was also a vampire."

"But he was your friend? You and him, you were friends?"

"Yes." He dropped his gaze, wondering if Benny was still that. "Yeah, we're friends."

* * *

_**Kermit, Texas**_

Sam looked moodily along the countertop, his half-eaten breakfast pushed aside. He wasn't sure what he should be doing next. He had Martin's car, but he had the feeling that the hunter would be gone by the time he got back to Carencro, and he wasn't sure he wanted to meet up with the man again anyway. He could dump the car here, pick himself up something, but that seemed like – it didn't seem much like taking the road he wanted to be on.

He could call Dean … the thought fizzled out as he realised that Dean hadn't called. It would have to be the first time in a long time that his brother hadn't called to see where he was, make sure he was okay. And unless his brother had somehow been killed on the vampire hunt, there was only one other reason he could think of for that.

He pulled out his phone and dialled the number under Amelia's message.

* * *

_**I-10, Louisiana**_

He should really be thinking of finding someplace to crash for a while, Dean thought, his hands light on the wheel, the car moving smooth and steadily. He didn't feel especially tired, despite the twenty-four hours of action. He'd keep going until he needed to stop. Behind him, the sun was above the horizon and the car's shadow stretched out long in front of the car.

The ringing sounded muffled and he looked around, then leaned over, popping the glove box and pulling out a cell.

"Sammy?"

_"'Sam, I need your help. Come quick.' Nice one. Spoofing the number, sending a distress signal ... you got me good. When did you do that?"_ He couldn't believe he'd been taken in by it. The timing had been perfect, why hadn't he noticed that?

"Can't take all the credit for that, I had some help. But it seemed like a reasonable precaution. Looks like I made the right call," Dean said casually. "So, did you see her?"

_"Yeah. Yeah, I saw her,"_ Sam said, his expression hardening as he recognised his words thrown back at him. _"And she's doing just fine. But, of course, you know that."_

"Actually, I didn't," Dean said. Sam sounded pissed, which was only to be expected. But there was something else under that, something he couldn't get a handle on. "I did know it was the only way to get you to lay off."

_"So? Is it done?"_

"Yeah, it's done."

_"Any casualties?"_ Sam stared blankly at the special board in front of him.

"Martin," Dean answered neutrally.

Sam closed his eyes, his mouth compressing. _Goddamn it. Goddamn it all to hell_. _You brought him into this and he got killed_. His face screwed up for a moment. _No. Benny killed him. Dean's friend, Benny, killed him_.

He dragged in a breath, knowing what the next answer would be, but needing to hear Dean say it. _"Was it Benny?"_

"He had it coming, Sam," Dean said, skating around the edge of the answer. "I'll tell you what happened."

_"I know what happened, Dean,"_ Sam ground out, his fingers closing around the edge of the countertop and holding onto it. Another mistake. Another _choice_. Another reason to go.

Dean heard the deep anger in his brother's voice. "Okay, you want to listen to me or not?"

The call cut out.

Dean looked down at the phone and flipped it shut. "Damn it."

Sam wasn't going to listen to him because he'd already pushed aside his own responsibility for it, he thought. Already laid the blame for Martin's death at Benny's feet. Had his brother been so desperate that he'd really thought that Martin had been up for a job like this? He shook his head. That was the least of it. The very least of it. He'd made a choice to bring the hunter in and he wasn't facing that either.

The eleven months that his brother had hunted and lived without a soul had done something, Dean thought tiredly. Given him a chance to push all the rest back and pretend it had nothing to do with him, maybe? A chance to live without morality, without conscience or repercussions or accountability? He wasn't sure of how it'd all worked in Sammy's freaky head, but there'd been a change. A fundamental change.

_Look, I'm not saying Sam ain't ass-full of character defects … but, I watched that kid pull one civilian out after another. Must have saved ten people. Never stopped. Never slowed down. We're hard on him, Dean. We've always been. But in the meantime... he's been running into burning buildings since he was, what? Twelve? Sam's got a darkness in him. I'm not saying he don't. But he's got a hell of a lot of good in him, too._

Bobby's words flooded back and his fingers tightened on the wheel. It'd been after, he thought uneasily. After he'd gotten out. After Cas had pulled him out without his soul. After he'd tried to integrate himself and face the memories of the Cage and what the archangels had done to him. A piece was missing. Or maybe buried. He wasn't sure.

The last eighteen months had brought back the old anger. But Sam wasn't dealing. And he had no idea of what the hell he could about that.

* * *

_**Kermit, Texas**_

**10 a.m.**

Sam drew the curtains on the windows of the room and stripped down, lying on his back on the bed. He didn't think he could sleep. Behind his eyelids, images came and went, in no order, random events, people, places.

He'd paid. He'd gone down into the earth holding onto a fallen angel, and the memories of being there, with Lucifer and Michael, were thick and gravid and clung to him when he went anywhere near them. He'd paid for all his mistakes, all his choices.

* * *

**11 a.m.**

Sam lay rigid on the bed, every muscle contracted into immovability. His heart was pounding fast in his chest, his respiration accelerated, behind his closed lids, his eyes moved rapidly. The dream was endless, and it wouldn't stop, wouldn't slow down, wouldn't let him go.

_I'm not handicapped. I'm not saddled with a soul. In fact, I used to skipper this meatboat for a while. It was smooth sailing. I was sharp, strong. That is, 'til they crammed your soul back in. Now look at you. Same misty-eyed milksop you always were. That's because souls are weak. They're a liability. Now, nothing personal, but run the numbers. Someone's got to take charge around here, before it's too late. _

You're not me, he said desperately, turning as the black hole at the end of the barrel rose up. I'm not you.

_Of course you are, I'm the part of you that you never acknowledged, Sam, all those years hunting with your father and brother, the part that liked it. The part that was good at it, and wanted to be just like Daddy, just like Dean._

NO!

_He twisted away as the roar of the gun filled his ears, falling. Not to the ground. He was still falling. He opened his eyes and he was in darkness, falling. Far, far below him, a thin red line meandered and he couldn't think what it was, what it could be._

_Heat rose up around him and he screamed._

_He was in Bobby's kitchen. He looked around wildly, staring at himself._

I have to know what you know. What happened in the cage?

_Sam, you can't imagine. Stay here, go back, find that bartender, go find Jess, but don't do this. I know you. You're not strong enough._

He stepped toward himself and drove the knife in, head thrown back as the memories came back.

_Ah Sammy, look at you, full of anger and fear, just about the perfect combination for what we needed, wasn't he?_

_The glowing archangel turned and looked his brother. Michael nodded, and Sam closed his eyes tightly against the sight of what was left of his half-brother._

_You did everything by the book, kid. I don't think I could have designed anything better than what you did all on your ownsome. Pride and wrath, envy and lust, you just about put the seven out of business._

He curled up on the ground, his head tucked into his arms. I didn't. That's not true. I didn't. I didn't.

'_Course you did, Sammy, the devil's voice whispered into his mind, drilling down deep. You were driven by rage, seduced by the thought of power, consumed with the desire for it. Did you ever stop to think about what you were doing, Sammy? Even once? No, son, you let it roll right through, let it feed off those emotions until it was too late, until you couldn't see Hell for the demons._

_It was all Dean's fault, of course. If he'd been strong enough to just let you die, then none of it would've happened, would it? No Hell. No Apocalypse. No torture for poor old Sam. If he'd been as strong as your dad, even. But Dean, he was weak and he let you down, left you alone to deal with the world as best you could._

_And what did it mean, Sam, at the end of it all? Did Dean die for a reason? Did he keep you safe? Was his cowardly sacrifice worth anything at all? Why no, because you went straight out and started chugging the demon blood and turned into the very thing he died to stop. Hilarious, really._

_I can see why you can't live with it, but you know that not facing things never helped anyone. Embrace your past, Sammy. You followed your desires and it all went to Hell. Remember it, Sam, remember it and glorify in it 'cos you know, if you're gonna be a bear, you might as well be a fucking grizzly, eh?_

Sam sat up in the bed, eyes staring at the shadowed room around him, his lungs burning as they heaved frantically in and out trying to get air. He lifted his hand and wiped it over his face, looking down at the sweat that coated it, coated him, had soaked into the linen and left the sheets under him cold and damp.

Slowly, his breathing settled. Slowly, his pulse dropped. He shivered as the sweat cooled on his skin.

* * *

**4 p.m.**

The bar was quiet when he walked in and he sat at the polished timber counter and ordered a beer.

He had no thoughts, sitting at the counter, staring vacantly at the bottles on the shelves behind the bar. He was empty and quiescent, calm and not-there. The bartender brought the beer and set it down in front of him and he nodded slightly, picking up the bottle and tipping it up, the cold, bubbling brew filling his mouth and throat.

He needed a car. He wanted to drive along the open roads and not be.

* * *

**8 p.m.**

Sam looked at the glass in front of him. It held perhaps a mouthful of amber liquid. He picked it up and drained it, setting it back on the bar. The bar had filled up, music playing quietly somewhere, people talking, laughing. He couldn't hear them very well, in his force-field. But he could feel them, their energy had begun to press up against him, making him itch.

He stood up, and dug his hand into his pocket, pulling out a small wad of notes, peeling one off and putting it on the bar next to the glass. Time to go.

Turning around, his head lifted and he saw her standing behind him. And everything came crashing back into him, memory and thought and feeling, filling him up and shattering the bubble, driving out the calm and nothingness, making him remember. Making him think. Making him feel.

"I knew that was you," Amelia said, her face lit up with hope and nervousness.

Sam stared at her, distantly aware that his heart was thumping against his ribs, that he couldn't get a deep breath into his lungs, that the walls that had held it all back had gone. That he was feeling.


	20. Chapter 20 An Angel in Hell

**Chapter 20 An Angel in Hell**

* * *

_**US-290, Texas**_

Dean pulled into the small motel at midday, his eyes aching and his head throbbing. He'd grabbed take-out an hour ago and he wanted nothing more than a few hours sleep, the last thirty-six hours had caught up with him in a big way, physically, mentally and emotionally.

He stripped off his clothes and tossed them into the duffle, pulling out a moderately clean pair of jeans and shirt and leaving them on the bed, heading into the bathroom. After five minutes of clanking, a tepid spray came through the pipes and he fiddled with the taps, trying to get more heat out, giving up when the water became colder but refused to heat up any further.

He wasn't entirely sure what was driving him to get to his brother. Sam hadn't answered his phone, the last three times he'd tried calling back. He'd even resorted to calling from a pay phone, with the same lack of success. He got that Sam was pissed at him. And maybe he had a right to be, he'd been playing fast and loose with his brother's emotions, knowing full well that he wasn't rational at all about the girl. There hadn't been a choice, of course. He hadn't been about to risk Benny to either of them and he hadn't wanted to be forced into choosing between his brother and his friend.

Lying on the hard bed ten minutes later, he looked at the sagging ceiling above him, wondering why Sam was so irrational about the vampire – or was it about him having a friend that Sam didn't know, didn't trust? Or the kitsune he'd killed, year before last. Amy had been a mistake, he knew that. She hadn't even fought back, the knife sliding into her without resistance, her face shocked and disbelieving and afraid. Sam had asked him for trust with her, and he'd made his own decision. He'd been running scared at the time, but it wasn't an excuse. Just the reason.

He didn't think it had to with Benny or Amy or anything but what had been happening between them for a long time now. Trust had been broken and mended, taped up and splinted together so that they could finish the job. And then the next job. And the next. He didn't think it would ever come back the way it had been. There was too much scar tissue in the way.

He rolled onto his side, wincing slightly at the bruising that covered his chest and shifting to a more comfortable position. He'd told Benny he didn't have a family. It hadn't been true, not exactly.

There was still the job to do, to be finished, and even without trust, he still wanted his brother at his back when they did it.

* * *

_**Kermit, Texas**_

Sam walked back to the motel, his head spinning. He asked Everett for 118, not knowing why. It'd just seemed like he'd wanted to be there.

She'd stood there in front of him, and everything he'd tried to bury had risen up and then she'd said something about having to be somewhere and she'd turned and walked out the door. And he was left with a churning stomach, an aching chest and no idea of what had happened.

He opened the door and walked inside, closing it behind him and going to the sofa. Sitting down he stared across the room blankly, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now. Seeing her had been a shock, a high-voltage tap that had zapped him back to the real world and out of his bubble of not-there-ness completely.

What he hadn't felt, he thought vaguely, had been relief. He frowned as that thought came into focus. Relief that she'd come looking for him? Relief that she was alright? He wasn't sure of why that was important. It felt important, for some reason.

The relationship hadn't been like the one he'd had with Jess. That had been … inevitable. Passionate but soothing. It'd filled him with excitement yet it had been calm as well, the visions he had of the future, of their future together, had been certain and that had brought a certainty to him. With Amelia, he realised uncomfortably, that certainty was missing. The calm was missing. Because of the situation, he wondered? Or because of something more inherent in what they'd looked for in each other? He leaned back against the sofa, his thoughts circling without answers, just more questions.

* * *

_**Geneva, Nebraska**_

Samandriel swam back up through the layers of pain in his vessel's body, his attention slowly focussing on the metal spike that had been driven between the frontal lobes of Alfie's brain. It was interfering. He drew energy from the body, pushing the foreign object out, as footsteps echoed in the hallway beyond the room.

"Naomi," he said quietly, reaching out, past the building he was in, through the layers of this plane and into the next. "Naomi, Crowley has me –"

Behind him, the door opened, and he froze as the smell of sulphur wafted into the room ahead of the demon. For a moment, the angel lost control of the vessel and Alfie's eyes filled with tears, his muscles locking with the rush of fear and desperation as he heard the demon's heavy footsteps approaching, then Alfie was carefully recaptured, shut back away, where he couldn't feel the pain, couldn't see the things the angel saw.

"Uh, uh, uh," the demon remonstrated softly, bending to speak into Samandriel's ear. "Been chatting across the celestial frequencies, have we?"

"No," Samandriel said, shaking his head, unable to think of anything else to convince the demon.

It straightened up behind him, an older man in the crisp white coat of a doctor or a scientist. The vessel had been a professor, tenured in some university in the mid-west, his specialty history. He'd been mostly interested in World War II and what the Germans had been doing to their prisoners of war. The memories of the professor's research had proved to be useful, and the well-hidden streak of sadism that had lain in the man had been an easy way in.

"Don't lie to me, Alfie," the demon said, walking around the angel.

"I'm not lying," Samandriel protested weakly, staring up at him. "Please, I wouldn't lie to you."

The demon grimaced disbelievingly. "Oh, Alfie – after all these weeks together … I mean, how I wish that were so."

Samandriel stared at him, swallowing as the demon bent and picked up the metal spike from where it lay on the floor in front of him.

"Now we're going to have to turn off that signal ...," it said, looking at the end thoughtfully. "Again."

It looked at him and the vessel's body began to tense, already feeling the remembered pain in the nerve endings, feeling the remembered agony of the insertion.

"No," Samandriel stared at the point approaching him. "No!"

The demon inserted the end into the hole in the angel's forehead and twisted the spike, screwing it back in through the bone, keeping the pressure steady as it passed into the brain tissue.

"NO!" Samandriel screamed, memory of pain and actual pain colliding, the human nervous system that he was locked into flooding the vessel with the precise data of agony.

* * *

_**Kermit, Texas**_

The room was still familiar. Painful in that familiarity. Sam sat on the sofa, drinking a beer and watching the television absently, not wanting to think about what had happened. Not wanting to think at all.

The faint growl was also familiar, as familiar as the smell of gun oil, of whiskey and leather. He looked up sharply, turning his head to the door and putting the bottle down on the table as the engine roar got closer, the black car's signature rumble pulling up in front of the room, idling then stopping. The squeak of the door and the deep clunk when it was closed.

_Dean._

Sam walked slowly to the door, pulling it open to see his brother. He turned away abruptly, automatically closing it again then stopped. There wasn't any point to delaying this conversation. He cleared his throat and looked back at Dean, lips thinned with the effort of keeping the anger that flushed through him held down.

Dean looked at him for a moment, reading his brother's feelings in the tightness of his face, the rigidity of his body.

"What'd you expect?" he said, walking past Sam into the room.

Sam pushed the door shut behind him, not quite hard enough to slam it, turning and clearing his throat again, wondering if there was anything Dean could say that would make what he'd done understandable, forgivable. He didn't think there could be.

"Long drive," he said, staring at his brother's back.

Dean turned around, shrugging slightly. "Yeah, well I wouldn't have had to make it if you hadn't hung up on me."

"Yeah, well, I heard all I needed to hear," Sam said pugnaciously. He didn't want a lecture on courtesy right now, it was all he could do not to walk across the room and put his fist into his brother's face.

"No, you heard what you wanted to hear," Dean corrected him dryly, shifting his weight slightly as he noticed his brother's tension. "I told you Benny wasn't killing. Hell, I watched him end the fang-banger that was."

"How 'bout Martin?" Sam asked. "How'd he end that?"

"Stupid, just like I said it was," Dean said, shaking his head. "Crazy sonofabitch didn't give Benny a choice. It was self-defence."

"Seriously, Dean? That's the story you're going with?" Sam walked toward him, ignoring the opening to ask about the details. "That the vampire was the real victim here?"

"Hey, like it or not, that's the truth, okay?" Dean looked at him consideringly. Sam didn't want the truth. He wanted to feel justified in what he'd done. Wanted a good reason for letting Martin cold-cock him and leave him handcuffed to a gas fitting. "There was a time when that actually meant something."

"Yeah, yeah, no kidding," Sam nodded sarcastically.

"What does that mean?"

"You think this is just about Benny?" Sam's face screwed up disbelievingly, his pulse accelerating at his brother's obtuseness. Benny had been the least of it. The very least of it.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean asked.

"What the hell do you think I'm talking about?" Sam scowled at him.

Dean stared at him for a long moment before understanding came. "Amelia? Come on, man, I sent you that text because I needed you to – to –"

"You needed me to what?" Sam leaned forward, his voice soft. "To tear ass to Texas?" He turned away, waving his hand vaguely in the air. "To be afraid that what had happened to Jessica, what happened to everyone we care about might have happened to her?"

He turned back to his brother, running his hands through his hair in frustration. "Did it occur to you, even for a moment, what that would feel like to me?"

"You were going to kill Benny – what was I supposed to do?" Dean said coolly. He'd known that Sam would go. He hadn't realised that he would go in fear of that. The message had been ambiguous enough, he'd thought.

"Is that what we are?" Sam asked him incredulously. "You think it's okay to save a vampire by making me believe that the woman I love – the woman I _told_ you I love – might be dead?"

Dean looked at him tiredly. "What do you want to hear, Sam?"

Sam shook his head, rolling his eyes at the lack of emotion in his brother's voice. He didn't get it. He'd been there himself, with Lisa, but he refused to acknowledge that anyone else had the same capacity to feel, to fear.

"That I was wrong?" Dean asked, wanting to be past this, wanting to find a way back to where they weren't at each other's throats. Sam didn't answer.

"Fine, I was wrong, okay?" Dean admitted, watching his brother's twitches. He didn't think Sam wanted the same thing. And he wasn't going to beg. "But if you'd've just heard me out, if you'd've trusted me, all of this could've been avoided."

"You didn't want me to trust you," Sam snapped, shaking his head. "You wanted me to trust Benny, and I can't do that!"

Dean looked at him and turned away. "Right."

He looked back at Sam. "You know, you asked me to trust you, about Lenore. You asked me to trust in your instinct that she wasn't killing people, wasn't evil. You remember that?"

Sam looked away, a red flush rising up his neck. He'd remembered it. He didn't want to look at the parallels now. Didn't want to think about what Dean'd done back then.

"That was a long time ago, Dean, things have changed," he said, his voice hard.

"Have they? Or have you?"

"Both."

"Okay, well then, what the hell do we do now?" He stood with his back to his brother, not really wanting to see Sam's face.

Behind him, Sam snorted. "That depends. It depends on you, on whether or not you're done with him."

Dean thought about that for a moment. He wouldn't abandon the vampire, wouldn't cut him loose for no reason. He was a friend. He was the only friend he had that he could trust.

"Well honestly, I don't know."

He turned back to Sam, looking at him, waiting for him to say something else, something that would indicate at least some intention of meeting him halfway. Sam said nothing, the silence itself an ultimatum. Me or him, it said to him. Choose.

_Fuck this_, Dean thought, anger rising at the position his brother had taken, at what he was asking, at his immovable stubbornness, so like their father's, that he wanted his own way and wouldn't admit at all to what he'd done wrong. _Just fuck this_.

"Glad I made the drive," Dean said, walking past Sam to the door. He opened it and closed it behind him.

* * *

_**Heaven**_

Castiel found himself in the room of reflections again. This time he was sitting. He'd been talking to a young mother, about her child. Then here.

"Castiel, we have a situation," Naomi's voice sounded from behind him and he turned to see the cold-faced angel walking past him. "Samandriel has been captured."

"I thought Samandriel was dead," Cas said, watching her walk behind the glass desk.

"He's been missing. And now we know. Crowley has him," she replied.

_Crowley, with an angel._ He rose from the chair. "Where?"

"His distress call cut out before I could pinpoint his exact location. But you will find him and you will bring him home," she said forcefully.

Cas looked down. "Crowley will have warded against angels, this time. I'll need help getting in."

"Take whatever you need," Naomi said impatiently. Her eyes focussed intently on him. "But you will be certain, Castiel, that it was your idea to rescue Samandriel. Not mine. Not Heaven's. Do you understand?"

He looked at her in confusion. Of what possible importance could that be?

* * *

_**Whitefish, Montana**_

Dean looked at the blank screen of the television set, the bottle of beer dangling from his fingers. It'd taken him two days to get back and he wanted to unwind, to relax, but his thoughts weren't leaving him alone, a chaotic maelstrom of memory and feeling and voices in his head, pushing and prodding at the anger that was down below them.

Sam had failed him, he thought, over and over again. He'd listened to his little brother, reluctantly, sure, but he'd given him the benefit of the doubt, over Lenore and her nest. He'd understood his brother's anger when he'd made the deal, it'd been selfish, him wanting Sam to live, sure. He'd asked, he'd tried to understand the hold Ruby'd had over him when he'd gotten out – god, he'd made the deal to save Sam, and then had found out that Sam had been getting his powers, his _dark_ power, from drinking the demon's blood, making all that he'd sacrificed a complete and meaningless nothing – he'd done his fucking best to keep Sam alive and whole, getting his soul back, staining his own … and for what? So that he could have his family? His family was gone. Sam had just proved that.

The anger coiled tightly inside, hissing and spitting, as the things he'd done, had tried to do, filled him up.

He finished the beer and got another one from the fridge, stalking across the room, tension tightening his muscles and fury crackling along his nerves. Sam'd chosen Ruby over him, chosen to trust the demon. He'd made him promise to go and live a normal life, a life without anything but pain and confusion and grief and then had pulled him back into hunting and thrown him to a vampire, and lied to him.

The second bottle went quickly, and he grabbed a third, throwing himself back on the sofa. Everything he'd done, every choice he'd made had been the wrong one. He shouldn't have gone to see Sam after Dad had disappeared. Shouldn't have let him take him to that faith healer. Should've gone with the reaper when she'd come for him the first time. Should've let his brother die in Cold Oak …

… but he couldn't have done any of things. It wasn't the way he was wired.

Sometime near dawn his thoughts began to slow. His eyelids dropped, the days of driving and the hours up and the emotions cascading through him taking their toll and his body shutting down without him realising it. He slid down until he was half-lying on the sofa, the last half-full bottle resting against his ribs, fingers curled loosely around it.

* * *

He didn't hear the sound of wings, but something had changed in the room, something that tugged at his consciousness, brought him back up from the depths of sleep.

His eyes opened slightly and he saw the blurred figure standing close to the sofa, and the reaction was instantaneous. He jacknifed upright, his heart jammed somewhere in his throat, the beer still in his hand fountaining over him and the sofa. He registered that the figure was Castiel a fraction of a second later as he looked down at the mess, leaning forward and flicking a filthy look at his friend.

"Dammit, Cas," he said, putting the bottle on the low table with a thump. "How many times I gotta tell you? It's just creepy." He looked down at his shirt, plucking the wet cloth away from his skin.

"Dean, I need your help. The angel, Samandriel, he's been taken," Cas said. Dean looked up at him, the name ringing a very faint bell.

"Sam-"

"He's been taken."

Memory came back and he frowned at Cas. "You mean Alfie? The wiener-on-a-stick kid?"

"Yes." Castiel said, uncomfortably aware that he wasn't sure how he'd known. "I, uh, I heard his distress call this morning."

"On what? Angel radio?" Dean rubbed at his eyes, yawning. "I thought you shut that down?"

"The penance is going well, and I thought it was time to turn it back on," Castiel explained shortly. "I've, uh, been helping people, Dean."

_Unlike Sam_, Dean thought, the memories of the last couple of days coming back to him along with the anger. "Uh, well, good for you," he said, getting off the sofa. Glancing at the angel, he buried his anger. It wasn't at Cas, the angel didn't have anything to do with it.

"Alright," he said, stretching the stiffness and kinks out of his back and turning to look at Cas. "So, who snatched Heaven's most adorable angel?"

"Crowley."

_Of course. The King of Hell hadn't been twiddling his thumbs in the last couple of months, he was all Action-Jackson. The demon had too many fingers in too many pies these days._

"I'm listening," Dean said, his concentration sharpening.

"Samandriel is being held in the general vicinity of Hastings, Nebraska."

"General vicinity," Dean repeated. "That's all you got?"

"Yes," Castiel said. "Which is why I need your help."

Dean glanced away. In the back of his mind, the parameters of what the angel needed were already forming and turning over in his mind.

"Seems that this is going to involve … talking to people," the angel continued uncomfortably.

Dean repressed the urge to smirk at the angel's unease. "Come on, Cas," he said, walking past him to the table. "I thought you were a hunter now."

"I thought so too, but …," Castiel said with a sigh. "But it seems I lack a certain –"

"Skill?" Dean filled in helpfully as he opened the laptop and waited for it to load. "Alright, what I am looking for?"

"Well, when you torture an angel, it screams and that kind of pain creates a ripple effect of strange incidents," the angel said, looking around the cabin distractedly as he spoke. He looked back at Dean as he typed in the search command. "Where's Sam?"

"Sam's gone," Dean said stonily, staring at the screen. "Doesn't matter, we'll find out for ourselves."

On the screen, the front page of the Liberty Globe had loaded, the headline looking about right. Tornados, strong winds, havoc. Demon sign. Or angelic pain. Either way. Geneva looked good.

* * *

_**Kermit, Texas**_

In the silence of the room her words hit him one after the other, reaching down through him to where they'd been, when they'd been together.

"I care too," she whispered, standing close enough to him to smell the light scent she wore, the feel the heat from her skin radiating softly against his.

_Another man's wife_, the thought flashed through his mind as he bent his head to press his lips against hers, her arms around his ribs, tightening as the kiss deepened.

The rush of desire was edged with desperation, with an aching yearning for something that he wasn't sure he was going to find. It lit up his nerves as her hands slid over his skin, a mix of intense arousal and a hopeless melancholia that made every touch, every breath seem profound and enriched, drawing deeper sensations through him.

There was a sense of familiarity there as well, a sense of comfort, of shelter and welcome and he knew where and how to touch her, knew what would make her breath catch in her throat, her hips arch up against him, her eyes fill with a dreaming passion.

_Another man's wife_, the thought lingered as he pushed inside, his eyes closing as her velvet heat engulfed him, swallowed him. _I don't care_, he thought, _I don't care_ … as that aching pressure built up inside them both, leaking out and spreading through nerve and muscle, breath mingled as they struggled to hold on, to make it last, to return to the connection that had been there, once before.

For a moment, teetering on the edge of release, on the edge of what they'd made together, he opened his eyes and looked at her face. And for a moment, he didn't recognise the woman lying under him, her eyes tightly closed, lashes trembling against her cheeks, mouth parted as her breath hitched.

He closed his eyes and thrust deep, hearing her moan, hearing his own groan rumbling in his chest as the line was crossed and he felt her rippling around him, the heat and pressure squeezing and stroking him until he couldn't hold on for a second longer.

He held his weight off her, slipping out as he shifted to one side, his thigh over hers, his hand cradling the side of her face, kissing her and searching for what he felt was missing.

* * *

Amelia stood in the bathroom doorway, looking at the man lying on the bed. It'd been as she'd remembered, better maybe, laced with a bittersweet gall that the time apart and the things that had happened in that time brought with it. At the same time, it wasn't the same, but she couldn't pinpoint what had been missing. Joy, perhaps? The vision of a future?

Sam was lying on his side, staring at nothing, the covers drawn over him.

"Say something," she said quietly, knowing that he wasn't happy, not knowing why. She didn't feel happy, exactly, either.

"Say what?" Sam looked at her. It had been everything he'd wanted. And it had felt like … like something wasn't there. A hope for the future? A connection that they'd both needed, once, but didn't any more? It'd felt somehow like saying goodbye. "That was great? That was … a mistake?"

"I don't know. Both, I guess?" she said, feeling her stomach drop, her pulse accelerate. She suddenly felt as she didn't know what she was doing. Didn't know why she was here. Didn't know the man who'd just made love to her.

Sam levered himself onto an elbow. "I understand."

"Do you?" Amelia said slowly, walking from the doorway to the side of the bed. "Do you understand I have a life here? A good man … who loves me. A man I don't want to hurt."

The words sounded accusing to him. As if … as if he'd done something wrong. "I know."

"And do you know that you're the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning?" she said, looking at him intently, needing him to understand it. She wanted everything. What she wanted was impossible. "And the last thing before I go to sleep."

He didn't know what to say to that. He felt that too. He'd shot his brother, thinking of her instead of what he was supposed to be thinking of. It didn't make it any better.

"It's tough to let something like that go," she added, her gaze dropping to her hands.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"Especially if you keep showing up here."

"Are you saying … you want me to leave?" he asked her uncertainly. He couldn't follow her emotional processes. Couldn't follow the winding trail of her thoughts. She thought in leaps, she'd told him. One to the next. He couldn't keep up with it.

"I'm saying that if you stay, against everything I believe in," she said carefully, looking into his eyes. "I would be with you."

Sam felt a flood of hope fill him, straightening up a little.

"But if you leave, then don't come back," she said, her voice thickening. "I can't have you with one foot in my life, and the other in whatever it is you do. That life of yours I've no idea about."

Sam looked away. "You don't want to know about it, believe me."

That wasn't quite right, he thought. _He_ didn't want her to know about it, about him, about what he'd done and who he'd been and what had shaped him, formed him. And he realised suddenly that he never would. How could he ever let her love him if he never told her the truth? How could the relationship ever work that way … _hi, I'm Sam, born May 2__nd__, 2012, fully-formed, no history to speak of, take it or leave it_ … would he be satisfied, knowing so little about someone?

It hadn't occurred to him before, all that he'd hidden, all that he couldn't, wouldn't, show anyone. He wasn't himself when he was with her. He was a made-up version of Sam. Minus all the things that he didn't like. That worked in the short-term, but not for life. No family. No history. No past choices, memories, mistakes. No curses and no details. Would he make up a past? A family? A job? A life? What would he tell her about scars he had inside? Football injuries? A mugging?

"_So, what am I supposed to do, just cut everybody out of my life? You're serious?"_

"_Look, it sucks, but in a job like this, you can't get close to people, period," Dean had told him, shrugging._

"_Hey, like it or not, that's the truth, okay? There was a time when that actually meant something."_

There had been a time when he'd done that. Told the truth. That'd been _before_, though, before he'd … before.

He looked back at her, feeling the memories closing close to him, feeling the fear rising and he drew in a deep breath. "It's a big step."

"For me – or you?" Amelia asked curiously, wondering what had gone through his mind, wondering what was scaring him.

"Both," he said and she dropped her gaze. "I need to think about this. You need to think about this." He couldn't explain what he was feeling. For the last six months, he'd felt like he had no choices. Now he did. He had the choice of living a lie and knowing it was a lie … or letting the lie go. "Words will never cover what you mean to me, what you'll always mean to me, but we should –"

"Think about this," Amelia said, nodding slowly. "Okay. How 'bout, two days from now. Around seven-thirty. I'll be off work then," she said, looking away.

"One of us'll be here. And we'll know. Neither of us will be here, and we'll know." She looked back at him, a faint hope curving her lips upwards. "Or both of us'll be here. And we'll know?"

Sam looked at her for a long moment, then let his gaze drop. His thoughts were churning. He hadn't felt this … uncertainty, this doubt, with Jess, he realised. But he hadn't done what he'd done when he'd met her either. He'd been clear back then. In himself. In what he'd wanted. In everything.

Amelia watched him, seeing the confusion in his face, feeling her own confusion tangling her thoughts. She hadn't told Don. Had wanted to see if what was between her and Sam was real, was permanent. It'd seemed plain when she'd knocked on the door two hours ago. It'd seemed right, when she'd seen him in the bar the night before. Why wasn't that certainty there now? Why did she get the feeling that what she wanted was not real, not for the man lying in the bed next to her. Not even for her.

* * *

_**Geneva, Nebraska**_

The demon adjusted the stainless steel head band over the angel's forehead. The original spike had been reinserted through it. He thought that there was more, held within the vessel's brain, within its skull, that he could tap with the right amount of pressure.

And if there wasn't, well, both he and the professor were having fun.

"When we demons possess a human, we invade all of them … their muscles, their bones, their brains," it said conversationally to the angel, holding another metal spike. "I can't help but wonder if it isn't the same for angels."

Samandriel stared at the spike helplessly. No more. _No more_.

The demon leaned forward, inserting the spike through the guiding holes. The professor's memories were helpful, understanding the regions of the brain that each hole corresponded to. For a history Prof, the man had been very hands-on.

The angel's scream rose in pitch, and behind it, the wave-lengths generated by the pain began to spike, the frequency of both harmonising briefly in the precise wave-length that resonated glass. The beaker of reddish fluid on the bench behind the demon exploded in sympathy.

"Lovely," the demon murmured, tightening the screw, watching the angel as the pain deepened.

Samandriel became suddenly rigid, his eyes fixed.

"Var tay ka ra," he intoned in a deep and inflectionless voice. The demon stopped, staring at him.

"Var tay ka ra," Samandriel repeated, more loudly. "Saul vock tay."

"Saul vock tay."

"SAUL VOCK TAY."

The demon glanced around the room nervously. Whatever the angel was saying, and it sounded suspiciously like a spell, it didn't seem to be having an effect on the physical world around them. He needed a translator, he thought. It could be Enochian, it could mean something, something important.

* * *

_**Geneva, Nebraska**_

The black car drove down the main street, Dean watching the traffic and the signs, looking for the local hospital. The police report had said that the guy had second degree burns from a bush that had inexplicably erupted into flames. After speaking to him. Seemed reasonably biblical. Cas said it was definitely a manifestation.

The angel rode silently in the seat beside him, either occupied with his own thoughts, or just not interested in conversation, he couldn't decide which, but his presence was a constant and vaguely irritating reminder that Sam was gone for good. On the long drive north to Montana from Texas, he'd thought he'd managed to get a grip on that, to deal with it and let it go. It didn't seem that he'd had. The anger at his brother lurked just beneath his conscious thoughts, barely covered and still painful.

At the front desk, Dean smiled at the receptionist and held out his identification. The press pass had been the easiest ID to make on short notice and didn't require anything from the angel walking next to him. The receptionist had smiled back, nodded and given him directions to the Burn Ward.

He found the room and knocked quietly against the jamb, stepping inside when he saw the man's eyes roll toward him.

"Mr Hinckley? We're from the Geneva Gazette, and we'd like to ask you a few questions about your … ambush," he said, trying a light approach, an easy smile, trying to keep his gaze on the man's eyes. The parts of his face that were visible between the thin gauze bandages were an aching red, blistered and peeling off in chunks, like the dude had spent five minutes in a fryer.

Hinckley looked at him sourly. "Yeah, I'd laugh too if it didn't feel like the sun just ate my face."

Dean winced.

"It's a metaphor," Cas muttered helpfully beside him and he turned to look at the angel quellingly.

He looked back at Hinckley, and down to the notes in his hand. "Sorry. Ah, in the police report, it said that the, ah, the bush – it talked to you, yeah?"

Hinckley looked up at him, nodding faintly. "Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but yeah."

"What did it say?" Castiel asked abruptly.

"No clue," Hinckley said, shaking his head. "Sounded like Klingon to me."

"Get any exact words?" Dean asked.

"You serious?"

"That's his serious face, yes," Cas interjected. Dean repressed the sudden, very strong desire to punch the angel. His brother would've been oozing sympathy. The thought drew his brows together and he looked down at the notebook.

"As much as you can remember, Mr Hinckley?"

Hinckley looked up at the ceiling. "Sounded somethin' like … soul vark … yeah, soul vark tay."

Dean looked around at Castiel, seeing the angel's face harden slightly.

"Anything else? Any other words you remember?" he asked. Hinckley shook his head.

"No. That was it."

"Thanks for your time, sir," Dean said as Castiel turned abruptly and walked out. "Sorry about the … uh, you know, the joke," he added awkwardly, following the angel out of the room.

* * *

Dean put his notebook into his jacket pocket as he lengthened his stride to catch up to the angel.

"Well, what do you think? Mean anything to you?"

"Yes," Castiel turned his head to look at him. "It's Enochian, it means 'obey'."

"Obey? Obey what?" Dean asked.

"I don't know," Castiel said, his voice anxious. "But the amount of pain an angel must be in, not just to manifest in that way, but to burn …" He stopped in the hallway, swinging around to the man beside him. "Dean, we have to find him before it's too late."

"Okay." Dean agreed, rubbing his thumb over his chin as he thought about it. "Okay, a sign like that, Alfie can't be too far. So we'll just start at the bush, and work our way out."

"And look for what, exactly? Crowley could have him anywhere." The angel stared at him disparagingly.

"Well, if I know Crowley, the place'll be swarming with demons," he said. "So we'll just drive until we see ugly."

He turned and started down the hall, not waiting for the angel to follow.

* * *

"There," the angel looked at the still, silent building. Dean glanced left and nodded, turning the car left into a small dead-end street, and stopping at the end. He turned off the engine and looked through the chain-link fence sourly.

"Well, would you look at that," he said wearily. "Our ninth abandoned factory, ain't that America."

The angel was silent, scanning the cracked concrete parking lot, the soaped and broken windows visible along the wall of the building.

"Hey, whaddya say this doesn't pan out, we head back to that beer'n'bacon happy hour about a mile back, huh?" Dean suggested facetiously, picking up the pair of binoculars from the seat next to him.

"Wait a moment, Dean," Castiel said, leaning forward as he stared through the windshield. "Those derelicts, they're demons. I can see their true faces."

Dean glanced at the three men, shabbily dressed, standing around a forty-four gallon drum with a fire lit in it. He put the glasses to his eyes, studying them, lifting the glasses to scan along the side of the building. Above the men, another demon was pacing along a ledge, looking around.

"Crowley's got that many hell-monkeys outside, he's got have at least double inside," he said, dropping the glasses and looking at the building narrowly.

"And angel warding," Cas sighed. "I can feel it."

"Well, you, me and the demon knife ain't going to cut it," Dean said, glancing at the angel and back to the building.

"Okay, I'll get Sam," Castiel said, shifting in the seat slightly.

"No," Dean said instantly, putting the glasses back on the seat beside him hard. The last thing he wanted was a job with his brother. Or the sight of his brother. "We don't need Sam."

"But you just said –"

"Look," Dean cut him off sharply. "If Sam wanted in, he'd be here. Okay?" He looked back at the building, his mind translating the outside shape into a rough interior map. With the right gear, they could do this alone. "I got a better idea."

Starting the car, he reversed back out of the street, swinging the wheel and turning to go back the way they'd come. He'd need a safe place to park her. They'd have to teleport there, he thought uneasily, there was no other way to get there and back quickly enough. Time to take one for the team. The thought brought only a very faint lift to the side of his mouth.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

The river curved gently, the current moving fast between the banks where the water was squeezed into a narrower channel, but the surface was smooth, ripples running back from the chain moorings that held the flat concrete barge in place against the bank, from the stern of the chunky steel vessel that was tied up next to it. _Fizzle's Folly_, the name on the stern had been painted in white and Dean's mouth twisted into a sour smile as he read it. He wasn't sure what protection the boat would have, looking down the length of the barge at the stairs and gangway that gave access, but decided to bypass them.

"Inside," he said quietly to the angel and they were standing inside, beside a steep companionway ladder leading up to the cabins on deck. Kevin sat at the table near the other end of the cabin, hunched over the piles of papers that covered its flat surface from one end to the other. Dean looked around the cabin's interior curiously. Every clear surface on the walls had been covered with notes and designs and drawings and maps, stuck so closely together that the vessel's hull wasn't even visible. Cupboards in between were filled with tools, plates and bowls and glasses, shelving filled with books. A second, smaller table was positioned in between Kevin and them, books, papers and notes covering that too.

"Slow reading?" Dean asked, seeing Kevin's back tense slightly as he realised they were there.

The prophet turned in his chair slowly, looking at them. "Slowest."

Dean nodded, looking around. "Where's Garth?"

Kevin turned back to the notes. "Supply run? I don't know … sort of lost track of when he comes and goes."

He stared down at the paper in front of him and exhaled irritably, turning back to them. "You guys need help with something? Kind of working here," he said, gesturing to the table.

"You look horrible," Castiel said bluntly. Dean turned around, sending him an exasperated look.

"Yeah, thanks," Kevin said disinterestedly, turning back to the table.

"He's right," Dean said. "You okay, kid?"

"Fine." Kevin nodded tiredly. "I'm just … in the middle of this."

"And?" Dean said, walking to the table. "Any luck?"

"Interpreting half a demon tablet?" He stared at the meaningless notes he had. None of them were worth the paper they were written on. He couldn't read it. Couldn't read it if it wasn't in one piece. The thought should have been cheering, since Crowley obviously couldn't either. But it wasn't. It was a stalemate. No go on either side meant nothing could happen. "No. No, nothing."

Dean saw the slump in the boy's shoulders. "Well, buck up, 'cause we need some more of that demon T-N-T, asap."

Kevin turned around to look at him. "You used it all."

"Yeah, so let's whip another batch," Dean said impatiently.

Kevin counted to three. "Sure," he said, nodding. "West Bank witch-hazel. Skull of Egyptian calf. The tail of some random-assed newt that may or may not be extinct –"

"Alright, alright, I get it," Dean cut him off as his voice started to rise. "Ingredients are hard to come by, huh?"

"That's just the first three ingredients," Kevin snapped, staring at him.

Castiel stepped forward, looking down at Kevin. "Give me the list. I'll get what we need."

Kevin looked at him. An angel. He could see the light, leaking around the vessel's edges.

Dean glanced at Cas and back to the prophet, grinning. "Huh."

Kevin rolled his eyes and flipped to a clean page of his notebook, writing fast.

Leaning back against the filing cabinet behind him, Dean watched him. The kid was burning out. Much more of this and he wouldn't have anything left even if they could get the other half of the tablet back. Burning out was pretty common in their line of work. The urgent press of time was an illusion but a strong one. No one was getting any younger.

* * *

_**Geneva, Nebraska**_

The demon dropped the spike on the tray as the bolts were undone on the steel door leading to the room. He looked at the doorway as Crowley came in, bolting the door behind and turning to face the white-coated demon.

"What on earth could you possibly need now, Viggo?" he asked tiredly. "I've given you every torture instrument known to man, short of a Neil Diamond album."

"I've found something, sir," Viggo said supplicatingly. "I need a translator."

"You're looking at him," Crowley said, coming down the stairs into the room. He gestured to the angel. "Show me."

Crowley walked to the wall, pulling a clean apron from a number hanging from hooks and putting it on as Viggo tightened the screw that penetrated the angel's right frontal lobe.

"Zor ba lay tar," Samandriel intoned. Crowley paused in the tying of the apron and glanced at the demon.

"What have we here?" he murmured, walking to the angel. Viggo backed out of the way as the King of Hell looked over the metal brace surrounding the angel's head.

"I think it's Enochian," Viggo said.

"Of course it's Enochian, you pigeon," Crowley murmured, his concentration on Samandriel. "The question is, why is he speaking Enochian?"

He looked at the screws thoughtfully. "What have you drilled into here, Viggo?" He twisted the screw.

"Zor ba lay tar," Samandriel said tonelessly. "Sar tay vock lay."

"Bollocks," Crowley said, the possibilities turning over in his mind. This could be a short-cut, a way to get the information he needed. If they could access all of it –

"What is it, sir?"

Crowley turned to look at the demon. "Well, what our feathered friend was uttering – essentially – was 'you, celestial being, have been created to be an angel of the Lord'."

Viggo's face remained hopeful but uncomprehending and Crowley swallowed an internal sigh. "You've got into his operating system. His factory settings."

"From who?" Viggo asked. "God?"

Crowley sent him a derisive look. "Who cares where it comes from? Let's find out what makes this flying monkey tick."

He turned back to the bound angel, twisting the screw hard to the left. Samandriel screamed.

"Sar tay vock lay."

Crowley twisted again and the angel's scream echoed around the room.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

Kevin struggled to concentrate on the words he'd written as behind him, Dean paced slowly back and forth across the narrow cabin, clicking his fingers randomly.

He picked up the headphones and put them on, shutting out the man behind him, shutting out the world around him, when Dean started to clap randomly as well.

Dean turned around at the end of the cabin and started back. He needed to be doing something. The quiet in here, it was too much of an invitation to thinking. He glanced at Kevin. Might be okay for a prophet but not for him. He didn't want to think. Didn't want the time to think. Not now. He looked at his watch for the fourth time in the last ten minutes.

"I mean, come on. How long does it take to get a calf's skull from Egypt?"

Turning around at the end of the cabin and pacing back, the tune escaped first as a soft hum, then a louder one, the words sung under his breath. Kevin seemed oblivious. He sang a little louder, going off-key on the high note at the end of the verse. Needed to be louder, he thought.

He was in the middle of the chorus, belting it out, when his phone rang. Glancing guiltily at Kevin, he pulled it out and looked at the caller.

"Hey, I thought I told you to go underground," he said, walking away from the table toward the forward cabins.

"_Hey, I'm so far under I'm breathing through a straw, brother."_ Benny's voice was tense. _"Uh, look … what happened to your friend, Martin, back there – he wasn't supposed to go down that way."_

"I know. Your grand-daughter told me," Dean said.

"_Dean, you did this old dog, real solid, and uh, the way you stood up for me –"_

"Shoe on the other foot, you'd do the same," Dean said, glancing back at Kevin.

"_Yeah, I hate to ask for much else but … uh … I don't suppose there's any chance you anywhere near the Catskills?"_

"Working a case on the other side of the country. Why? What's up?" Dean heard the threadiness in Benny's voice, heard his breathing speeding up.

"_Yeah, just hittin' a lil' rough patch, I guess,"_ Benny said, dragging in a deep breath. _"You know, doing this whole solo thing."_

"Benny, one day at a time, man," Dean said firmly. There wasn't a lot he could do on one end of a phone line, except mouth the usual platitudes and hope the vamp would keep it together.

"_You know what … uh, cup of coffee sure would do me good."_

Dean looked out the window, letting out his breath in a soft exhale. It must be killing Benny to have to ask him for that. "Alright. Soon as I'm done with this case, I'll be there. Okay?"

"_Yeah."_ Dean heard the relief in his friend's voice. _"Alright, brother. Thank you."_

The line cut out and Dean looked at the phone, closing his eyes. Hunger. That's what he'd heard in the vamp's voice.

There was nothing he could do about it. Nothing at all. Benny was going to have to sink or swim on his own, sooner or later. He couldn't just take off right now anyway. He put the cell back in his pocket and walked back to Kevin, brushing the headphones with his hand as he walked around the table.

"Hey, where is your mom?"

"Somewhere safe," Kevin said, looking at the notes.

"You kicked your mom to the kerb?" Dean asked, brows shooting up.

Kevin pulled the headphones from his ears and shrugged. "She was too distracting. I couldn't focus," he said, looking up at Dean's vaguely accusatory expression. "Angels said I had to go to the desert to learn the Word of God," he added, gesturing around him. "This is my desert."

Dean shook his head. "Yeah, but your mom's your mom."

"I can't enjoy a world I need to save, Dean," Kevin said, shaking his head. "I can enjoy it when it's all over with. Right now, there's nothing more important than this."

He picked up the stone piece and his pen, staring down at it, hoping that the hunter would leave him alone again.

Dean looked at him. The world always needs saving, he wanted to say. You never get a life that way. He didn't say it. It didn't matter. When you had the ability to do the job, it came with the responsibility for seeing that it got done. That was the bottom line, the only thing that held true. If it meant that your life was forfeit, through death or just abandonment, that was the price that you had to pay. There was no point in dreaming for something different.

He walked slowly away from the table, looking out the portholes in the cabin's sides, at the river beyond, at nothing in particular. The world always needed saving and the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, he thought distractedly.

* * *

_**Kermit, Texas**_

Sam sat on the park bench, the rain falling still light enough to ignore. The fact that he was sitting here, trying to weigh the pros and cons should have told him something, he thought bitterly. He hadn't had to think about it with Jess, his heart had led and he'd followed willingly, unthinkingly straight into her arms.

But he hadn't been – he'd been himself back then. Just a twisted family history and no idea of what was coming. Dean blamed himself for pulling him out of Stanford, for turning up, but the reality was that his brother had had nothing to do with it. The demon had killed Jess to drive him into hunting, and if his brother hadn't been there, he'd probably have stayed in that room and burned alive as well. He sighed. Maybe that would have been the ideal solution. At least for his family.

And Jess' death had driven him, had flogged him along the path he'd been set on.

He'd almost forgotten what loving her had felt like. All the clichés rose to mind … not needing anything else, like coming home, feeling as if they could do anything, so long as they were together … a regular Hallmark fest. It had all been true, the way that clichés are, of course, or they wouldn't be clichés.

He didn't feel those things about Amelia. Not in the same way. He needed her, needed to see her acceptance of him in her eyes, needed her arms around him, keeping the nightmares and the pain and fear away from him, needed to feel that there was a future for him that didn't involve sacrifice and blood and losing everyone. But … he didn't know if he could tell her. And he thought, he had a feeling that not telling her, not giving her the chance to decide for herself, knowing the whole mess, knowing what a mess he was, was being unfair. And would bring them down no matter how good his intentions were in keeping it from her.

When he'd gotten his soul back, he'd asked his brother about the year Dean had spent with Lisa and Ben. One thing had stood out, really stood out from the rest.

"_I wasn't myself. I couldn't be myself," his brother had said, half-drunk and getting more and more loaded as Sam kept topping up his glass, knowing it was the only way he'd get close to the truth on the subject. "I pretended that I – I was normal, you know, Sammy? But she never knew me and after a while, I couldn't be me anymore."_

He didn't want that to happen to him. To them. That level of deceit – how the hell could any relationship survive that level of lying?

He started as the angel appeared on the bench beside him, Cas leaning forward, staring at the people who moved through the park unaware of either of them.

"Watching humanity, it never gets old, does it?" he said quietly, looking at the children playing on the equipment.

He turned to look at Sam. "We need you."

"Dean doesn't want me around," Sam said stiffly.

"Dean's not asking you, Sam," Cas said, looking back at the children. "I am."

"I've got stuff I need to do, Cas," Sam said uncertainly. Was he going to pretend now that he didn't know what he was going to do at seven-thirty in a days' time?

Castiel looked at him. "Samandriel, an angel, is being held by Crowley and tortured, Sam. Is your 'stuff' more important than that?"

Sam ducked his head, looking at the ground between his feet. "No."

"Then let's go."


	21. Chapter 21 Wearing and Tearing

**Chapter 21 Wearing and Tearing**

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

The flutter of wings was loud in the enclosed cabin. Dean kept looking at the notes on the wall when he heard it.

"I got what we need," Castiel said.

"It's about time." Dean turned around, his expression hardening when he saw his brother, standing behind the angel. "What's he doing here?"

Sam recognised the expression on Dean's face. He'd seen it a few times before. Dean was angry, and angry that he was angry. "Don't worry, Dean. Once we save Alfie, I'm out," he said pacifically.

"Oh, once we save Alfie," Dean said sardonically. "Don't hurt yourself, Sam. Cas and I can handle it."

"Not according to Cas," Sam countered.

Dean felt the words as a betrayal. Another one. He looked at the angel. "I told you, we didn't need him."

Listening to them, Castiel felt his patience wearing thin. It was just bickering, as humans did. Emotional, illogical bickering. He turned to the hunter, seeing the emotions that seethed below the surface. They didn't have time to have tantrums. An angel's life was at stake here. "We need everything, Dean."

"And I need both of you," he said, looking at Sam, then turning back to Dean. "... as you put it, to stow your crap. Can you do that?"

Dean's mouth tightened slightly as he stared at Cas. It wasn't often the angel got pissed. The last time had been when Raphael had been attempting to re-start the Apocalypse. Going into Crowley's latest hide-out, rescuing an angel who'd been tortured … he thought that the angel was probably a little on the stressed side.

His gaze shifted to his brother, meeting Sam's, seeing the faintly challenging expression on his face. So long as things stayed just business, he could handle it, he thought. But if Sam said one motherfucking thing about anything else, he'd be picking his teeth off the floor. He was done with fucking around and trying to resurrect the family he'd lost.

* * *

_**Geneva, Nebraska**_

Dean watched his brother get into the car without saying a word. Sam had automatically opened the passenger door and Cas had automatically opened the back door. He looked away, his fingers tightening over the wheel, and started the engine. If his brother could do the doesn't-matter-to-me-I'm-cool thing, he could too.

Pulling up next to the building fifteen minutes later, he realised that he could shut down the anger he felt, well enough to work with Sam for the next however many hours, anyway. He didn't need to worry about Sam's competence, at least. He turned off the lights and the engine as the car coasted silently down the narrow alley, stopping at the chain-link fence that marked the building's boundary. They got out, and Castiel walked to the front of the car.

"There are four main points of warding – north, south, east and west. Four Enochian symbols –" He dug into his pocket for a pen and caught Sam's hand, drawing the warding sigil on his palm. "– that you need to destroy before I can enter."

Dean nodded, going to the trunk. He pulled a couple of cans of black spray paint from the box to one side and tossed one to his brother. They were new, full, gloss-black enamel. They'd break the sigils' power. He put his into his jacket pocket and closed the trunk, walking back to the hood and looking at Cas.

"Okay, so what? We go in, take care of the Hell-mooks, and you extract the angel?"

"Yes," Cas said, nodding to himself and lifting his gaze to Dean. "After killing so many, I have to save at least this one."

Dean saw the pain in the angel's eyes, in his face. He didn't think Cas would ever get over that. He shrugged inwardly, there were things that you couldn't get over, couldn't make right. It was just the way it was.

"Sounds like a plan," Sam said softly.

Dean's gaze shifted to him briefly. "Okay." He pulled out Ruby's knife. "Let's do this."

"Wait. Here," Castiel said to Sam, holding out his angel sword. "This doesn't just work on angels, it kills demon too."

Sam hefted it, feeling the weight and balance, his eyes flicking to his brother to see his expression. Dean's face was hard as he walked past them toward the building.

"Thanks, Cas," Sam said and followed him.

* * *

Crowley tightened the screw on the left frontal lobe, Samandriel's screams bouncing off the hard surfaces in the room.

"Vau may par lar less," the angel said atonally. "Vau may par lar less."

Crowley stared at him thoughtfully. They were on the right section, he thought, just hadn't reached the right page yet.

"What is it?" Viggo whispered, crossing his arms tightly over his chest.

"That," Crowley said over his shoulder, "was tablet talk. Protecting the Word of God seems to be hardwired into these dingbats."

* * *

They took care of the three demons guarding the outside of the building, using a simple bait and wait process. Most demons were too stupid to think of ambush and misdirection when confronted by a genuine Winchester, their greed to kill them overwhelming what little thought processes they possessed. The angel sword did indeed work as efficiently as Ruby's knife, with a deeper penetration and more balanced feel to it as well.

Inside, the factory was laid out in a simple grid. Wide hallways ran around the perimeter of the building and crossed from one side to the other. Crowley had charged the generators, rather than plugging into the grid, and the lighting was the soft red of emergency lighting. Maybe kinder to demon eyes, who knew, Dean thought with a bare minimum of interest, looking down both empty halls as they came to a junction. He gave Sam a direction and turned left, hearing his brother's footsteps recede behind him.

It was a strange thing that Crowley used these monstrously large places but never brought up enough demons to really fortify them. He wondered if that was a misconception on the demon's part that they wouldn't be found, or if Crowley had little idea of military strategies and just hadn't cottoned onto the fact that it was either easier to defend a smaller place with fewer demons, or bring up half an army if he wanted to use places like this one. Either would have stopped a small, mobile force from getting in and killing off his guards one by one.

He stopped in the shadows of the doorway, slipping soundlessly to one side as he heard the hard click of leather-soled shoes in the long hall ahead of him. The demon walked slowly past him, head turning from side to side. He listened, hearing it turn and move away and came out of the darkness, pulling the spray can from his pocket and shaking it, the rattle loud enough to make him wince. Spraying a black cross over the sigil, the hiss of the compressed air masking any other noise for the moments it took, he looked up and down the hall. No one came and a quick glance at the wall showed the warding broken. He capped the can and slid it back into his pocket, the soft soles of his boots slurring over the floor as he walked on.

He'd found the southern ward. Sam had already broken the northern one. Two left, he thought. Picking up the movement in his peripheral vision, he saw his brother in a corridor parallel to him. Another movement of black against the darkness and he stopped, fading back into a pocket of shadow between the low-wattage overhead lights, watching a demon move along the edge of the wall and silently disappear around the corner. The layout of the place was clear in his head. The corner led to another cross-corridor, one that would take the demon to Sam.

He was moving fast through another parallel corridor when he heard Sam, saw the flickering red-gold light against the wall ahead of him, he rounded the corner and saw the demon he'd tracked jump onto his brother's back, arm locked around Sam's throat, one knee raised high, braced against Sam's spine. Dean accelerated and grabbed the back of the demon's jacket, hauling him off and thrusting Ruby's knife into his back, the wide blade angled between the ribs to pierce the heart. The demon lit up as he dropped it, yanking the knife clear, and looked at his brother.

"Thanks," Sam said, still panting.

"You're welcome." He turned away, heading back for the western wall. Sam finished the cross on the eastern sigil and followed Dean, long legs striding out to catch up with his brother.

A muffled scream, directionless but rising in volume filled the wide hall as Dean and Sam turned into it, now on the western side of the building.

"Alfie," Dean commented, his teeth setting slightly, pushing hard at the memories that bulged along the wall in his mind.

They both slowed as they heard the footfalls behind, turning and moving apart at the sight of the shadows flickering on the wall at the hall's end. Sam pulled out the long slim cylinder from his jacket and Dean did the same when he looked back and saw two more demons running up the corridor toward them. The cylinders held a simple flare at the end, a potassium perchlorate oxidiser that would ignite the ingredients held inside on a ten-second delay.

They waited until the demons were close enough, then ignited the flares, throwing the cylinders into the demons path and covering their eyes as the bombs exploded, the pulsing fire burning through the demons and vessels and leaving the shadows charred into the walls and floor behind them.

* * *

Crowley added another few turns to the screw, brows rising as he realised how deeply the spikes were inside the brain now. Samandriel's screams were no longer the warbling shrieks of a few weeks ago, he thought. Whatever pain was being generated, it was a deeper and more lasting type.

"Zar le fa."

"Demon tablet," Crowley said abruptly. "Tell me one I don't know, huh."

He tightened the screw again.

Over the groans and cries of the angel, Viggo heard something else. He tilted his head as the explosions sent a delicate shudder through the building, vibrating faintly through the soles of his vessel's feet.

He looked at Crowley, who stood listening to the angel's pain with a rapt expression on his face.

"M-M-Mr Crowley, not that this isn't important," he said, trying to find words that would get the point across without leaving him a pile of dust in the middle of the floor. Crowley hated to be interrupted. Hated it. "But perhaps we should be making preparations to leave – we seem to be under attack."

Crowley glanced at him, holding up a finger up warningly. "Did you say something?"

Viggo shook his head unhappily, looking away. There were a dozen demons out there, even if something was attacking them, they had time, surely.

* * *

The screams were getting louder and they walked fast down the last hall, finding the warding sigil on a heavy steel door. Sam turned to look down the hall as Dean pulled out the can of paint and broke the warding.

He capped the can and looked around. "Alright, anytime now, Cas."

The angel appeared in front of them, his breath hissing through his teeth, swaying unsteadily.

"Cas? Hey –" Sam took a step toward the angel. "You okay?"

"It must be the sigils –" Castiel said, looking around. "I can't reach through them for more power."

"Sam," Dean said, pulling out his paint can. "Help me mush this crud."

"No – Dean, wait," the angel reached out and stopped him. "There's not enough time, Samandriel won't last much longer." He stared at the steel door behind the brothers, as the screams rose. Dean turned and looked down at the lock on the door.

"Here, Cas, here, take this," Sam said, handing him the angel sword.

It wasn't just the sigils, the angel thought, his teeth clenching together as the pain rippled out from the room and reverberated in his vessel's bones and flesh. His vision was greying at the sides, every scream digger deeper into his mind.

His hand gripped the hilt of the sword tightly as he lifted it to cover his ears, Samandriel's voice and the palpable frequencies of pain piercing through the molecules of the metal door, the concrete walls, penetrating him and dragging out memories, memories he hadn't known he'd had, memories of terror, and pain, and a thick implement, aimed at his eye, memories of an auburn-haired angel with eyes the cold blue of the northern seas, leaning closer and closer to him, memories of agony, of unending anguish as his self, his core, was violated in a way that no words could describe.

Sam stared at the angel, as Castiel began to back away from the door, hands pressed tightly to the sides of his head, his breathing growing faster and harsher.

"Dean, hurry up," he said tersely, watching the angel.

"I'm trying!" Dean snapped back, looking around for something bigger than his knife he could use to lever the fucking thing free of the lock. There was movement in between the door and the jamb. Ruby's knife was holding but it was too short.

Sam watched as Cas backed to the opposite wall, sliding down as his back hit it, terror filling the angel's face, terror and a hopelessness, as if Cas was facing something he couldn't escape, couldn't bear to look at.

Behind him, Dean slammed his hand against the door in frustration. The knife was too short and he didn't have anything else.

"Plan B," he said, turning away.

"We have a Plan B?" Sam glanced back at him, brow creasing in surprise. He watched his brother turn, running hard and throwing himself at the door, the back of his shoulder hitting the metal with a massive bang, bouncing off as the lock refused to give in that easily.

_Plan B_, Sam thought, taking a breath and running at it, hitting it from a slightly different angle.

The door shuddered and gave incrementally with each of the blows against it. Too incrementally for Dean.

He ignored the throbbing in his shoulder-blade as he turned to look at his friend. "Cas, anytime now."

The angel was curled back against the wall, not seeing Dean, not seeing the hall, not seeing the recalcitrant red steel door. The memory had him, a high-pitched whining in his ears, the drill coming for him, coming to take what was him and change it, kill it, maim it.

Dean looked down at him, brows drawing together. There was nothing right about the angel, he thought. Nothing at all. He turned and rammed the door again, eyes screwed shut as the bruised muscle protested.

* * *

Viggo stared at the door as it shuddered in the frame, watching with widening eyes the metal bar holding it closed bending with each hit.

Crowley glared at the door and the ruckus in the corridor and turned back to the angel.

"As you were saying?" he growled.

Samandriel sat upright, his eyes open and fixed, the thin lines of blood seeping down the sides of his face at the base of every screw.

"Var na sar-ee."

Crowley stared at him. "Yes?"

"Ar doz ar fay."

Crowley glanced up at the door, hearing the Winchesters out there now, seeing the bar had been bent back further, was giving way. He looked back to the angel furiously. "Spit it out, you heavenly pile of filth!"

"Par day ra."

Crowley stared at him. "Holy mother of sin."

"What?" Viggo looked from the angel to Crowley, desperately trying to ignore the squealing of the metal door as it started to give more and more. "What is it?"

"There's an Angel tablet," Crowley said quietly. He'd known there would be. He'd known it. But it was nice to have it confirmed.

The flat metal bar bent the last few millimetres and came free of the bracket, the door swinging open with Dean behind it, and Sam behind him. He looked down from the height of the short flight of stairs that led down into the room. Alfie sat strapped into a chair, some metal frame enclosing his head, blood covering him. Behind the angel, a man stood, silvered hair brushed back, his white coat immaculate, staring up at them. Crowley had gone.

Dean watched the man's eye flick toward the cart holding the instruments of torture and launched himself down the stairs, catching the demon's arm as Viggo picked up the spike. He held the arm as he thrust the knife toward the demon's chest and the demon's strength lifted and shoved him back into a pillar. As they struggled, Dean felt the point of the spike sliding through his jacket as he forced the knife closer, shifting slightly and pushing hard against the strength holding him pinned, Viggo's arm across the base of his throat.

Sam skidded to a halt, his intention to help his brother thwarted as another demon came in through a door on the far side, accelerating toward him.

Castiel stumbled down the stairs, stopping in front of Alfie, the sword dangling limply from one hand as he unscrewed the spikes in the angel's skull.

Viggo gave suddenly against the hunter's weight, using the backward movement to lift and throw Dean across the room into a half-glass door. He felt his head hit the glass and tucked forward as it shattered around him, falling to the floor onto the shards. Rolling to one side as the demon grabbed his coat, he couldn't get enough purchase on the glass-covered floor to prevent the demon hauling him to his feet and wrapping an arm around his neck. He dropped the knife and twisted out from under the demon's arm, using the fulcrum of the shoulder to jacknife Viggo in front of him and slamming his knee into the demon's stomach, then jaw.

Sam watched the demon he faced lift his arm back for a wide haymaker with a trace of amusement, letting it go by and stepping in tight, the return jabs in quick succession breaking ribs, hitting the diaphragm and then the nerve centre behind it. The demon ignored the blows, swinging wildly but still there, not going down. He hit it hard and watched it stagger back, its attention caught by a long weapon on the cart beside it, picking it up.

Cas blinked rapidly as the flashbacks got stronger. The room, the pale and reflecting room. The angel, holding him down, telling him not to move. He pulled the last of the screws from Samandriel's head and clenched his teeth, lifting the metal frame gently clear. Samandriel stared at him, his eyes wide.

Dean reversed the knife and dropped beside the white-coated demon, fingers digging into its wrist as its hand closed around his throat. He heard his brother's whistling breath and flicked a glance at him.

_Crap!_ _Sam had no way to kill the fucker_. The realisation flashed through his mind, seeing the other demon advancing toward him. Swinging his hand wide, he knocked Viggo's hand from his throat and drove the fist holding the knife into the demon's temple, on his feet and behind the demon as Sam's kick drove it back into him, the wide blade plunging into its back and the demon lighting up.

He was back on Viggo as the demon shook its head groggily, eyes focussing on the knife he held above it.

"Wait!" Viggo said quickly, desperately. "I know – I know things."

Dean stared down at him and swung his arm out. "Cas, go."

The sounds of wings filled the room for a second and was gone, the two angels as well.

"Good, good," Viggo said, staring up at him, hope filling his eyes as the knife remained above him. "There's so much you don't know. You need me."

"Yeah." Dean nodded, looking at him. There was a lot they didn't know. A lot they needed to know. But there was something familiar about the demon, hidden behind the meatsuit's face and expressions, scratching at him. He doubted the recollection would be a pleasant one. And need – that was a word that he didn't ever associate with the hellscum. _Wrong word, pal_.

"Yeah, I don't think so," he said, driving the knife deep into the chest, watching the surprised expression disappear in the turgid red-gold light.

He straightened up, looking at his brother. Sam shook his head.

"Demons lie, Dean."

Dean nodded, and gestured to the door, rotating his shoulder slowly. It would stiffen up if he didn't keep moving it.

* * *

Samandriel leaned back against the car, Castiel holding him up.

"It's okay, you're safe now," Cas said. "I'm taking you home."

"No," Samandriel said, his eyes widening in fear. "You can't take me back there, Castiel."

"Why not?" Cas hesitated, wondering how badly the torture had affected the angel he held.

"You don't understand. I told Crowley – things – things he shouldn't have known," Samandriel said. "He got to our coding, our secrets – secrets I didn't even know we had."

"What secrets?" Cas looked down at him, a shiver tracing its way through his vessel's nervous system as somehow what Samandriel was saying seemed … familiar.

"Heaven?" Samandriel suggested. "Naomi."

"No, who's Naomi?" Cas stared into the battered angel's eyes as a flashing image of an auburn-haired woman flared behind his own.

"Who's –?" Samandriel gasped disbelievingly, rolling his eyes as he realised all that the angel didn't know, needed to know. "Listen to me, listen to me closely. I've been there. I know. They're controlling us, Castiel."

"What do you mean?" Cas said slowly, his fingers tightening on the angel's clothes involuntarily.

* * *

He was in the chair, and she was there, looming over him. Naomi, auburn-haired, cold, ocean-blue eyes.

"Kill him!" She leaned close to him, pinning him back in the chair.

"What does he mean – they're controlling us?"

"Castiel!"

"Who is controlling us?" He stared into her eyes, memory flickering now. Auburn-hair. Cold eyes. Fanatical eyes. "Why did I see your face? Why was I so afraid? What did you do to me?"

The porcelain-smooth, expressionless face tightened, the cold eyes narrowing and she straightened abruptly, her hands fisted in his coat, dragging him up with her, holding him there.

"This is a direct order. Kill him!"

She thrust him back and he was falling, past the chair, past the office, back into his vessel standing next to Samandriel and the black car.

* * *

His mind was empty. The sword dropped smoothly from his sleeve into his hand. He pushed it, without thought or hesitation, into the angel in front of him, and light poured from Samandriel's eyes and mouth, pure white light and an aching celestial song that swirled around him and faded away, disappearing as the light did.

* * *

"What did I just do?" Castiel asked, sitting in the chair in the pale room.

"You killed a traitor," Naomi said calmly, sitting on the other side of the desk, the even, white light shining on auburn hair, lighting ocean eyes.

"Samandriel was good," Cas insisted, staring at her. "And I was trying to atone –"

"Samandriel was broken," she overrode him. "He revealed the existence of what I would die to protect. What any of us would die to protect."

Cas looked at her, brows drawn together in confusion. Samandriel was no traitor. The King of Hell had tortured him, and it hadn't been the pain that had broken the angel, but the knowledge accessed directly through the vessel's brain. He hadn't given it up willingly. Even if he had, what could possibly justify his death? His murder?

"The Angel tablet, Castiel. Crowley knows," she told him.

"I just murdered one of our own to protect a tablet," Castiel said, an edge of disbelief in his voice. All his penance, wasted. His regret and repentance. The good he'd done, wiped out by an act of murder for a … a piece of stone.

Naomi looked at him, smiling thinly. She got to her feet and walked slowly around the desk. "If the Demon tablet concealed demons in Hell, what do you think the Angel tablet could do to us?"

He looked up at her uncertainly. How could it be his Father's will to protect Heaven by killing? Thou Shalt Not Kill. That'd been made very clear to humanity. Were the angels exempt from that ruling?

"You're a hero, Castiel," Naomi said gently. "You've done Heaven a great service."

"And that's what I tell Sam and Dean?"

* * *

"Cas!" Sam called as he ran with his brother up to the car. The angel was slumped over Samandriel. "What the hell happened?"

Castiel raised his head slowly.

_(You tell the Winchesters that Samandriel had been compromised)_

"He was compromised," he said, staring at the side of the car.

_(He came at you and you acted in self-defence)_

"He came at me," he said, getting to his feet, looking from Sam to Dean. "I killed him in self-defence."

_(Say you must return his body to Heaven … and then bring him to me)_

Dean's eyes narrowed as he saw blood spill from the corner of the angel's eye. _What the fuck?_ "Cas, you okay?"

Castiel looked down at Samandriel. He felt the slow trickle of the blood over his cheek and lifted a hand to wipe at it. "My vessel must have been damaged in the mêlée."

He couldn't think, his thoughts were cloudy, scattered. "I have to go. Samandriel's remains belong in Heaven."

In some far-away part of him, perhaps the part that Jimmy Novak clung to, he was aware of the brothers watching him, their confusion beating at him. There was an explanation, he thought vaguely, I just can't – I will be able to explain this to them later.

_(I need to see just how far Crowley's dug into him, _she spoke in his mind_. Do you understand?)_

Yes, I understand.

He bent to the dead angel at his feet. Another one. Dead at his hand. He didn't understand. Didn't understand at all.

"Cas, wait," Dean said.

"Thank you – both – for everything you've done," he said, looking at neither.

The sound of beating wings filled the night and Dean stepped forward. "Cas!"

The air closed together where the two angels had been with a soft sigh.

Dean looked around at the darkness surrounding them. He'd gone. Back to Heaven. The Heaven he'd been so afraid to see, he thought uneasily. None of it made sense. Not one fucking bit of it. He looked at Sam and saw the same doubts and concerns in his face. They couldn't talk about it here. Couldn't think about it. They needed somewhere safe.

* * *

_**Whitefish, Montana**_

The hiss of compressed air propellant filled the room and Dean looked around, from window to window, at the walls and the doors. He walked to the front door, watching as Sam finished the last sigil.

"Okay," Sam said, putting the can down on the table. "That should do it. Cas can't see or hear us now."

"Okay, what the hell?" Dean looked at Sam in bewilderment. "Cas was trying to atone, Sam. He said he couldn't return to Heaven because of what he'd done."

"I know," Sam agreed immediately.

"I told you something was off with him since he got back from Purgatory," Dean said belligerently. Sam shrugged, walking toward him.

"So, what? You think that someone's messing with him?"

"Who?"

"Angels?" Sam suggested.

"Why would the angels have him kill another angel?" Dean asked disparagingly. It made no fucking sense at all.

Sam looked away, unable to think of anything that might explain what the angel had done. What Cas had done after asking them to help him rescue Samandriel. It made no sense.

Watching his little brother bending his brain around the problem, Dean suddenly realised that Sam didn't have to be here. It wasn't his problem and he had other things to do. Other places to be. He didn't want to hold him here, didn't want be responsible for his brother's feelings.

"You know what, man? I got this," he said quietly. "You go."

Sam looked back at him, brow wrinkling up. "What?"

"Don't you have a girl to get back to?" Dean reminded him, keeping his tone as gentle as he could manage.

Sam looked down awkwardly. "Yeah, I guess I do." He looked back at Dean, registering suddenly that he'd forgotten and it'd been Dean who'd had to bring it up. "Since when are you on the Amelia bandwagon?"

Dean looked away. He wasn't really, but he couldn't say that to Sam. "I don't know." He walked slowly past Sam. "I'm just tired of all the fighting."

He opened the fridge and pulled out a beer. He felt tired and flat and empty. "And maybe, you know, I'm a little bit envious," he admitted bluntly, lifting his gaze to meet Sam's. "I could never separate myself from the job like you could."

Sam watched him twist the top off the beer, tossing it across the room in the general vicinity of the trash can, not sure he was hearing any of this right. It'd been a long, long time since his brother had been this honest with him. He didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know if he was supposed to say anything.

"Hell, maybe it's time for at least one of us to be happy," Dean added, lifting the bottle and swallowing a mouthful.

"You being such a big hugger an' all?" Sam said, feeling his chest tighten as he watched Dean shrug it off.

What had he been doing, these last few months? He couldn't feel that anger now, that poison and fear and pain that had been driving him on and on since he'd stood on his own in a laboratory that had been covered in black ooze, alone and terrified.

"She does make me happy," he said, shoulders hunching up as he realised that the choice was here and he couldn't put it on anyone but himself. "She could be waiting for me, if I went back. I'd be ... a very lucky man if she was."

Dean looked at him, looked at the regret that flashed over Sam's face, hearing the 'but' behind those words. Sam worked things out weirdly. Left alone, with no pressure and no outside influences, he did better. It was one of the things he should've known about his brother, should've handled better, he thought.

"But now, with everything staring down at us, with all that's left to be done …," his little brother said, shaking his head, shrugging helplessly. "I don't know."

"Huh," Dean said noncommittally. This wasn't his call and it wasn't his place to comment on the change of heart or mind. But he couldn't let Sam roam with it too long either.

Sam nodded. "Yeah."

"Well, I do know this," Dean said, walking over to him, hoping that he'd find the words to say it right, this time. "Whatever you decide, decide. Both feet in or both feet out. Anything in between is going to get you dead."

He looked at him, waiting for the defensive kickback, waiting for a reaction. He'd tried to make it a choice, not an ultimatum.

"Yeah, I keep hearing that," Sam said softly, his gaze cutting away, thinking of Amelia. He looked back at his brother, saw the question in his eyes. "I'm gonna take a walk, clear my head."

He turned away, going to the door. He could feel Dean's gaze on him as he opened it. But there was no sense of impatience from Dean, or exasperation. Or disappointment.

* * *

He stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind him. To the left, twisting around the cabin and up the side of the mountain, a deer trail was still visible. It led a few hundred yards higher, into the forest, meandering around the long line of the ridge. It was a good place to walk, to think. He headed for it, looking at the needles and matted vegetation under his feet, letting his thoughts drift.

He hadn't wanted anything, when he'd first seen her. Just to be left alone. But she'd seen him, really looked at him and seen him, and it had jolted him. For a long time, between his realisation that he'd failed his brother, that he'd lost his family, had lost everyone, and meeting her, he'd drifted across the country and very, very few people had looked at him and seen him. At the same time, she'd known that he'd seen her too.

Maybe that made what had connected them inevitable. Maybe they'd both been so relieved to be seen that they'd made it more than what it had been. He'd never know, not for sure. He knew that she'd saved him, stopped his freefall. He knew that she'd reminded him of what it meant to be human again, to be held and comforted, to laugh out loud, to have something to laugh about. He'd held those moments close to his heart and maybe he'd told himself it was love, when it really wasn't. When it just need and want and someone who'd seen him. He wouldn't forget her and he would always be grateful to her, but that wasn't love either.

It'd taken him a long time to tell Jess about his family, and he'd held things back. But, he'd always felt that in time, if they'd had the time, he would have been able to tell her. All of it, the truth about all of it. She'd been smart and brave and he could still feel her love, could still remember how it had looked in her eyes.

What had happened since her death … he wasn't sure he could share that. The one person who knew was his brother. Knew almost all of it. And even he didn't know what had happened in the cage, down with the archangels and the remains of a half-brother and everything that had been done to him. He wasn't sure he could tell anyone about that. But he knew, now, he couldn't pretend to himself that it hadn't happened to him. That it hadn't changed something inside of him.

He reached the top of the trail and sat on a rock, looking out over the steep fall of the ridge, beyond over the next valley, and the next. He'd never wanted to tell Amelia about his life. Any of it. He thought that told him something, right there. He could imagine, all too clearly, her face in the light of revelations like the ones he carried. He couldn't bear to see that. Somewhere, out there, there might be a person who could hear it. There might not. He would have to live with it, whichever way it went.

Something was happening, was still happening in the planes that bounded this one, he thought, watching a hawk circling on the updraughts absently. Something that Heaven was involved in, as well as Crowley. The demon tablet was just the tip of what they knew. And maybe it was a road that would take them where they needed to go, needed to end up.

He couldn't turn away from it. Couldn't say it wasn't his problem. Dean never had. Maybe he would stop seeing disappointment in his big brother's eyes if he could find the way back to who he'd been.

He sat on the rock and watched the hawk, feeling a peace stealing into him, different from the peace of being with someone, from seeing himself through someone else's eyes. It was the peace of being with himself, and for the first time in a long time, not wanting to run.

* * *

Dean looked at the door for a few moments after it closed behind his brother. He had no idea if Sam had realised that what he felt for Amelia wasn't what he'd seen in his brother when he'd seen him with Jessica. He had the feeling that Sam hadn't told Amelia all that much about himself, or his life, or what that encompassed. He had the feeling that Sam couldn't tell her. He knew that feeling. He'd told himself he didn't want to bring darkness into their lives, bring that knowledge that killed innocence and the idea that the world was a safe place, a good place. It'd been partially true, he guessed, but mostly he hadn't wanted to see Lisa's reactions to finding out what he was, inside, where he couldn't be clean.

He turned away from the door, lifting his beer and letting it run down his throat, pushing away those memories. He'd thought he could make it work, pretending to be normal. He never could. So much of who he was, was hunter. Killer. There was no point pretending that he could just jettison that part of himself, cut it out and be done with it. He didn't want to do that. Normal hadn't been exactly what he'd thought it would be.

Sitting on the sofa, his feet propped on the low table, he thought of Kevin's naïve assumption that he could save the world and go back to being Kevin Tran, nerdy, geeky student and normal guy. It would never happen, he knew. Sam had thought he could go back, when they'd killed Yellow Eyes and avenged their mother and father and Jessica. But a whole new can of worms had opened and the chance to change anything came and went without their even noticing it. Maybe that'd been destiny, pulling their chains and pushing them around. Maybe not. He'd never felt he could just ignore what had been happening, though he'd wished for that ignorance, time after time.

This time, at least they knew what they were aiming for. Closing the gates of Hell and shutting every damned demon down in the pit for the rest of eternity. But he couldn't do it alone.

Castiel was compromised. Whatever had gotten the angel out of Purgatory, it had affected him somehow. He couldn't begin to imagine what was going on with his friend but it was something that was confusing the crap out of Cas as well as them and it was no longer safe to trust him even on minor details. He exhaled deeply. He'd wanted them to be how they'd once been, back to back against Heaven and Hell and as usual, that possibility had been torn away again. He shrugged inwardly. He'd wanted a lot of things to go back to the way they'd been before and he should be used to the disappointment of that never happening.

Benny was even more compromised than the angel. He shifted his feet to the floor, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The vampire had never let him down, had had his back and saved his life and had nearly given up his own for him, more than once. He'd known down in the land of the monsters that they could never be what they'd been down there once they got out. Sam's reaction had been irrational but it was the same as most hunters would feel. And he'd heard Benny's hunger, in the plea to come. Sooner or later, if Benny didn't find a key to it himself, that hunger was going to take him. He rubbed a hand over his face.

The vampire felt too deeply. Needed connections and caring. And he couldn't give him that. He knew that Benny kept control through what he saw in the eyes of those he cared about. He found his strength in others, not in himself. He knew it because he'd been the same way, once. It'd been a long, rough road to the realisation that he couldn't do that. That he couldn't rely on anyone, that he couldn't trust anyone, that he couldn't care what others thought of him or felt about him. And it was a road that Benny was going to have to take because the alternative … there was no alternative. Only death and the return to Purgatory and this time there would be no way out for the vampire.

He was still angry with Sammy, he knew that. Still angry that the trust between them, which had once been the most important thing in the world to him, had been broken beyond any possibility of repair. It didn't change the fact that he needed him. There was no one else he could face Hell with, no one else he could hunt with and get this job done. There was just no one else.

He couldn't keep pushing at Sam, though. He had to find a way to let his brother recognise his mistakes for himself and work them out. Pushing hadn't done anything but escalate the confusion and the defensive anger between them. Pushing at his father had produced the same results, he should've recognised it earlier, he thought with a tired smile. And he needed something, something to show that things had changed. He felt a slow, seeping pain spread through him, a renting of a part of himself that he'd thought he'd never compromise. Apparently all things could be compromised, with the right leverage.

He got up, and walked to the table, lifting his jacket and pulling his cell from the pocket.

* * *

_**Swan Lake, Catskill Mountains, New York**_

Benny finished the blood bag, glancing around to make sure no one was watching. He had one more left in the bottom of the cooler. He would either need to do another run, find a hospital with an unguarded blood bank or … he pushed his thoughts away from that. Dean would come and get his head back together again. He'd be fine. He shut the cooler and pushed it back into the tray, lifting the tail gate and locking it in, and closing the top gate.

The phone rang and he let out a deep exhale of relief when he saw the caller.

"Dean, thank you mightily, blood," he said, looking around. "I'm in a hard way here, how close are you?"

"_I'm sorry, man, I … um, I'm not going to make it,"_ Dean said.

Benny walked away from the camper, feeling his nerves jumping and his muscles twitching as anxiety zipped through him. The hunter's voice was strained. "You mean, now or …"

"_Listen, Benny, everything you done for me, I'll never forget … but uh … this is it."_

Benny heard the regret in his words, regret and something else, a resolution, clear and hard and inarguable. Whatever had happened to his friend, on that case on the other side of the country, it had changed something fundamental in the man. Changed the loyalty that he would have bet his life on. And changed it for good, he thought.

"End of the line?" he asked lightly, swallowing against what that meant for him.

"_End of the line,"_ Dean confirmed.

There was a moment of silence and Benny realised it was his move. "Yeah, well, I never liked these cell phones, anyway," he said, forcing a smile through the stiffness of the muscles in his face.

"_You, uh, you stay good, alright?"_ Dean said. And again, Benny heard a deep regret, hardly buried.

"You too, Dean," Benny said quietly. For his friend, the decision had been made and there would be no turning back from it. He looked down, feeling the loss of that man beginning to flower inside of him. The loss of the friendship and the loss of the last stopper he had to fight against the hunger. "And thanks for the ride."

"_Yeah, man,"_ Dean said. _"Adios."_

Benny heard the line cut out and he closed the phone. The anxiety was rising and he wasn't going to be fine. He could feel the scratching of the hunger, just a little scratch so far, down deep inside. It would become stronger. It would become a tearing. It would become unbearable without someone else, someone else's eyes to see himself through, to keep him from doing what his body, the vampire inside of him, wanted him to do.

At first, it hadn't mattered. Then when he'd met Andrea, it had. He couldn't bear the thought of seeing her look at him as if he was a monster. And the thought of her disgust, of seeing it in her eyes, it had killed the hunger stone-dead. Just like that. For ten years, he'd never fed on a live human being, the need to see her look at him with love, look at him as if he were human, had overcome the hunger and carried him with it.

By the time they'd made it out of Purgatory, he'd realised that Dean did the same thing. When the man looked at him, it was as a friend, not a monster, a friend that he trusted, with his life. So looking into Dean's eyes had stilled the hunger too. And then Elizabeth.

Well, he thought, getting to his feet. All three were gone now. It was just him. And he could fight it, in the memory of them, or he could give in and turn into the monster and to hell with the consequences.

He walked back to the camper and climbed into the cab, pulling out the maps that littered the long seat. He needed a hospital. Somewhere big, but not too big, somewhere busy. He looked at the map and nodded. That would be fine.

The engine started up and he eased off the lake shore, trundling along until he could turn onto road. It was up to him, to be a monster or not. He couldn't rely on having friends to keep him on the straight and narrow. It was either important enough to make sure he did it on his own, or it wasn't.

* * *

Dean sat on the sofa, his gaze on the television in the corner, taking in the fight without seeing or hearing it. He'd heard the anxiety in Benny's voice. Heard the fear. Another person he'd failed, he thought. _Killing that guy, killing Meg. I didn't hesitate, I didn't even flinch. For you or Dad, the things I'm willing to do or kill, it's just ... it scares me sometimes. _And it wasn't just killing. He would break a promise for them – for Sam, turn his back on what he wanted, give up whatever it took …

Sam plunked the two bottles down on the low table, his gaze on the fight on the screen, and Dean picked one up, twisting off the lid. He looked at the bottle as Sam put one bowl of stew down in front of him, and set the other in front of himself. For a moment, they looked at each other, and Sam nodded slightly, picking his own beer up.

Once, Dean would have clinked his bottle against his brother's. Sam knew it. Dean knew it as well. He didn't, just tipped his up and swallowed a mouthful, turning his gaze back to the screen.

Sam looked at him for a moment longer, before he put his bottle down and picked up his food.

It was an armistice, he thought. Not peace. Not forgiveness. Maybe not even a way back. Dean had said he was tired of fighting. He could have left. There was still something between them, something that they needed each other for, something they had to finish.

And it would have to be enough.


	22. Chapter 22 Real Magic

**Chapter 22 Real Magic**

* * *

_**Farmington Hills, Michigan**_

Jerry Bucowski ducked through the thinning crowds on the train station in Orchard Hills, heading for his car. The book should have arrived today. It began to sleet as he reached the small compact, opening the door and shoving his briefcase and umbrella inside, twisting the key with excitement.

It probably wouldn't be as good as he'd wanted, he thought, trying to temper his feelings. He wouldn't be disappointed, though, he'd just wait and see.

The small package in his mail box renewed the flush of anticipation and he ran up the two flights, hurrying into the small one-bedroom apartment and dumping his case, umbrella, keys and coat on the chair by the door. He put the package on the table and looked at it for a long moment, then ripped the envelope open.

The book was tiny, pocketbook-sized. But it was thick. The binding was old leather, rubbed and frayed, giving it a nice look of authenticity, the goldleaf title almost vanished from the spine, barely legible on the cover. Opening it, he sat down slowly, his first quick flipping through the pages slowly as well as the text and the delicate ink drawings caught his attention.

Two hours later, he looked up, brows rising as he registered the clock above the fridge. It was better than he'd hoped for, a lot better. And it gave him a feeling, an odd and exciting feeling, of being able to change things, really change things from now on.

He twisted around in the chair and opened his briefcase, pulling out a notepad and a pen, and turning back to the chapter he'd just been reading. There were a lot of things he needed to get.

* * *

_**US-2 E, Michigan**_

The Impala was barely visible in the rain-filled night, gleaming black body against the blackness, only the headlights visible. The wipers kept time with the music playing quietly on the stereo, and Sam's flashlight beam shone on the papers in the file he was holding on his knees, brow wrinkled as he stared at the notes.

Dean looked over at him, his mouth twisting slightly as he took his brother's concentration. They'd headed east on the promise of a case in Minnesota, but the supposed haunting had been a family of owls, nesting in the roof. The smell up there hadn't been great, but it was definitely not supernatural.

"You okay, man?" he asked, glancing back at the empty, dark road ahead of them.

"We have the most powerful weapon we've ever had against demons and we can't find a way to use it," Sam said, frustration edging his voice.

"Yeah, well, Kevin's on it," Dean said reasonably. "When he finds something, he'll call. So we wait."

Sam shook his head, looking down at the file again.

"Look, we have both had a rough go over these past couple of weeks," Dean said slowly. "And … I know what you gave up wasn't easy."

Sam lifted his head, turning to look at his brother. They hadn't said anything further about the decision, either of their decisions, although Dean'd mentioned briefly that he'd lost Benny's number. He didn't know how to start a conversation to tell him what he'd thought, what he'd felt. It seemed more like Dean wanted it all to stay in the past and start from page one again. Which, he thought wearily, was okay with him. He hadn't felt that clarity again, or the peace. He thought it would take a lot longer than a single conversation and a single session of thinking about it to get that back.

"Maybe we ought to take the night off," Dean continued, glancing over at him. "You know, go see a flick, hit a bar – or two – have some fun. You remember fun, don't you, Sam?"

The shrill ring of the phone in his pocket saved Sam from having to answer that. He pulled it out and answered it.

"Kevin, what do you got?" He listened and rolled his eyes, making notes on the back of the paper in front of him. "Garth. Hey. Really, uh okay, yeah …thanks, man."

He hung up the phone and looked at his brother. "Garth … has a case for us."

The corner of Dean's mouth lifted slightly. "How'd he know where we are?"

"GPS on our phones. He's been tracking us," Sam said sourly.

"What's the deal?"

"Uh … well, it's close –ish, Farmington Hills, Michigan. Dude got ripped limb from limb inside his locked apartment," he said, reading back his notes.

"That's not good," Dean said, thinking of the quickest way down to Detroit.

"Working a case," Sam said, exhaling. "So long as we're waiting on Kevin, that'll be our fun."

Dean looked at him thoughtfully and turned back to the road. He didn't want to rehash the things they'd decided particularly. Didn't want to have to talk about what had happened at all, in truth. There was a hole in the pit of his stomach at what he'd done. A pit that hadn't lessened or gone away in the weeks since he'd called Benny.

He'd argued that realistically, no one could save the vampire but Benny himself. He certainly couldn't drop everything and drive wherever to see him if he started to feel himself coming off the wagon. And he'd told himself that Benny knew that too. But it still felt wrong. Disloyal. Ungrateful. Cold.

He flicked another sideways glance at Sam. His brother hadn't said anything further about the relationship, and he wondered briefly if Sam had realised that whatever had gone on between them had been more like need, than love. The constant agitation and anger wasn't obvious in him anymore, but that didn't mean it wouldn't come back. If circumstances pushed Sam's buttons again. He let out his breath slowly.

Maybe the case would be engaging enough to keep them both occupied for a few days. They could head south afterwards, swing back to Missouri, check on Kevin.

* * *

_**Farmington Hills, Michigan**_

"Body's still up there," Dean said in a low voice, looking at the coroner's van parked haphazardly on the street, and the four wheel drives that the forensics teams used parked behind it as they walked past them. "Told you we'd get here in time."

Sam showed his badge at the door, walking into the bullpen and looking at the man standing next to a desk. Dean flashed his badge and walked behind him, looking around.

"Sheriff?" Sam said, walking to the man. "Special Agent Taggert, and this is my partner, Special Agent Rosewood."

Dean repressed the urge to roll his eyes, glancing away as he put the ID back in his jacket. He'd been surprised by Sam's choice of Taggert and Rosewood for their latest FBI badges – not only were the names obvious to anyone born before 1980, but the characters hadn't even been particularly competent. His use of Lebowski flickered through his mind and he shoved it all aside.

"FBI? You guys are quick, haven't even got the body out of here yet," the Sheriff said, surprised.

Dean looked at his brother. "Yeah, well the FBI is all work – no play."

Sam looked back at him blandly and turned to the Sheriff. "You know, why don't you give me the tour while my partner looks around?"

"I work better on my own," Dean said, smiling slightly at the Sheriff.

The Sheriff shrugged disinterestedly. "Your world, Agent. Follow me."

Sam followed the Sheriff into the bedroom. The double bed took up most of the space in the small room. Under a bloodied sheet, the torso looked peculiar. On either side of the bed, small, cloth-covered lumps indicated the position of the arms and legs, where they'd been found. Sam looked around the room. On the walls, a round, metal shield hung, just mild steel, he thought curiously, catching sight of other medieval-styled weapons, toys and weapons.

"Vic's name was Ed Nelson, thirty-one years old, an insurance claim adjustor," the Sheriff read from his notes. "He lived alone, which is a real shocker, considering his place is full of toys."

Sam glanced at him. More than toys, he thought. Guy was into some kind of community or society, maybe just online.

"So what happened?" He looked back at the body.

"No sign of forced entry," the Sheriff followed his gaze. "Nearest we can tell, he was tied up and pulled apart. Died of the shock, or massive blood loss. Dealer's choice on that one."

"So what about these chains?" Sam looked down at an open gym bag, lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. Inside it, the dull gleam of chain links in a bundle sat on top of clothing.

"That's actually chain-mail."

"Seriously?" Sam turned to look at the Sheriff, who shrugged helplessly.

"We did find clear rope burn marks on his wrists and ankles," he added, gesturing to the limbs.

Sam walked to the arm and lifted the cloth. The rope burns were there, nearly half-an-inch deep, the raw flesh pale and rubbery with the loss of blood. Above the wrist, on the inside of the forearm, there was a very delicate tattoo, black, a silhouette of a tree bare of leaves, the roots shown as well. He'd never seen it before, but it looked stylised. Maybe something to do with whatever the guy had been into, he thought.

Standing up, he turned back to the Sheriff. "So, anything … missing … from the body?"

"You mean aside from the arms and legs?" The Sheriff looked at him disparagingly. "Nope, all there. Twig and berries too."

"What about the neighbours? They hear anything weird?"

The Sheriff looked at him. "Uh, the neighbour downstairs, said she got woke up in the middle of the night by the sound of horses, stomping their feet and galloping. We, uh, didn't find any hoofprints."

Sam nodded.

"Fortunately," the Sheriff continued, turning around and walking back to the living room. "We got a real lead off the cell phone. According to the phone records, Ed's last call was from a guy called Lance Jacobson."

Sam looked past the Sheriff as Dean came out of the kitchen. The quick shake of his head told him that his brother had found nothing in the way of EMF, sulphur, hex bags or any other physical clues to explain the dismemberment of a man in his tiny apartment.

"An accountant, also in his thirties, also lives alone." The Sheriff glanced at Dean as he came into the room.

"And how is he a lead?" Sam asked.

"The two of them talked together for fifteen minutes, and then Lance sent Ed here, all kinds of angry texts," the Sheriff explained. "Some of them were your typical text stuff, but some were a little weird."

"Weird how?" Dean flicked a glance at Sam.

The Sheriff looked at his notes, flipping back the pages. "Like … you shall bleed for your crimes against us … and, uh, this beauty … I am a mage, I will destroy you."

Sam looked at his brother. That was definitely within their purview, he thought. Dean's eyes narrowed slightly in acknowledgement.

"My men just brought Lance in for questioning," the Sheriff added. Sam's brow wrinkled up.

"Well, we're going to need to take first crack at the suspect."

The Sheriff nodded resignedly. "No problem, not sure what we're going to ask him about it anyway."

* * *

Dean walked out of the interview room, his head reeling. That the guy had been genuinely broken up wasn't the issue, he thought. He hadn't killed his friend, couldn't've killed him. The force required to tear a limb from the body was significant. No one could've done without vehicles or … horses … or something with more weight and strength than a man possessed. Which brought back the question of demons. They certainly had the strength. Not a single blip from the EMF though, and no sulphur, anywhere in the apartment.

"So," Sam asked as he walked up behind him. "Do you believe Dungeons and Dragons?"

"Well, he didn't put a whammy on us," Dean said, shrugging. "He's not our man."

"So what are we looking for?" Sam looked around the room. "Start with the website? We can see if Lance's story check out."

"It's what they had in common, aside from never getting laid," Dean commented, following his brother to a vacant computer.

Sam typed in the game name and the website appeared.

"_Welcome to Moondoor, Michigan's largest LARPing game." _

He clicked through a gallery of pictures, slowing as the screen showed Lance in costume, surrounded by other characters. "There's our guy."

He clicked on the video link and they watched the promo video playing.

"_Moondoor, a world of intrigue, honour, passion. Four kingdoms. Followers of the Moon. Elves. Warriors of Yesteryear. And the dreaded Shadow Orcs. All will fight on the fields of Never in the bi-annual battle of kingdoms. Pick up a sword, or a mace. Take control of Moondoor, defend the current ruler –"_

Dean's attention sharpened as a woman appeared on the screen, dressed in a long, red gown, a crown set on fiery red hair. "Wait … is that –"

"_Queen of Moons."_

The video ended and the brothers looked at each other. Even with the get up, there was no mistaking the hair or the face of the current ruler of Moondoor.

_Charlie Bradbury._

"What the –" the shout came from the interview room and they stood up, watching the cops run into the room, one running back out, grabbing a phone and calling an ambulance.

"What happened?" Sam asked the deputy as he ran back for the room.

"No freakin' idea!" the man snapped.

Ten minutes later, the body was in a bag, being wheeled out through the bullpen. Dean and Sam watched it go.

"You want to follow?" Dean glanced at Sam.

The Sheriff came up beside them. "You're gonna want to see this."

He walked behind the counter and tapped a set of instructions into the computer on the desk, bringing up the security footage from the interview room. The brothers leaned forward, looking at the tape. Lance had been scratching his arm absently. The itch appeared to get worse, and he stood, pulling his sleeve back. Sam's eyes narrowed as he saw the tattoo on the arm that the accountant was scratching at. It was the same as the one on Ed.

Lance coughed and looked at the blood that covered his palm, turning to the two-way glass window behind him. The second cough sprayed a pint of blood across the reflective mirror, and he turned away, blood leaking from his eyes, nose and ears before he fell to the floor.

"God forbid he was contagious." The Sheriff looked at them. "I'm gonna dip myself in hand sanitiser."

Dean's gaze flicked at Sam as the Sheriff left them.

"No EMF, no hex bags, no sulphur – I got nada. You?" he said, as Sam leaned closer to the screen.

"Watch the video again," Sam said, tapping on the keys. "There. See that? Same as Ed's."

Dean looked down at the photograph of the fine tattoo on the Sheriff's desk. It was the same. Exactly the same. Both done at the same time, he wondered? The work was so fine that he was surprised not to see some distortions. Tattoos worked better with bold lines, not the fine, delicate ones. Those tended to get stretched, distorted, faded in relatively little time.

"I don't know, maybe they had matching tattoos … I mean, they were … brothers in arms." Sam frowned at the picture. "You recognise it from anything?"

"Tim Burton movie?" Dean suggested facetiously. "Aside from the mark of the creepy here, the only thing these guys have in common is LARPing."

Sam looked down at the keyboard. "Lucky for us we know the Queen."

* * *

_**Moondoor**_

The field was dotted with tents, pennants, wood smoke from numerous fires, banners, people in costumes and medieval props and hung over with an air of unreality usually associated with pantomimes in shopping malls. Dean looked slowly around. People had way too much time on their hands, he thought derisively, his gaze caught by a pair of girls in leaf-green tunics and tights, large, pointed ears sticking up through their hair. Way too much time.

He turned to look at Sam, half-smiling at his brother's expression of amused disbelief, then a voice rang out behind them.

"I, Boltar, the Furious, bind you to this stock so that all of Moondoor may see you for what you are. A thief."

They walked around the small group of people gathered around the wooden stocks. Boltar, the Furious, was a slender man in his mid-thirties, wearing multiple layers of leather and suede and cotton under a surcoat of red and white, a large fabric pouch slung over his chest, leather gauntlets covering his expressively gesturing hands.

In the stocks, another man, in a black tent-like covering, was held fast by his hands and head.

"My Shadow orc brethren will descend from the Black Hills," he said, his speech blurred and distorted by the overlarge fake tusks that sat over his lower teeth, every word accompanied by a spray of spittle as he tried to get his tongue to negotiate the impediment in his mouth. "And the tents of Moo–"

Both Boltar and the orc stared down at the ground at the teeth which had dropped out mid-word. Dean and Sam also looked down at the tusks, lying in the dirt.

Boltar held up his hands. "Uh, Halt!"

Around him, the players froze obediently in their positions. Sam looked around at them, one brow raised as he took in their stillness. Boltar bent and picked up the teeth, wiping the dirt from them fastidiously.

"Thanks, Jerry," the orc said quietly. "Sorry."

"Yeah, no problem, Monty," Jerry said, inserting the teeth back over Monty's lower jaw.

Dean ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth in sympathy.

Boltar stepped back and cleared his throat, as Monty gave him a discreet thumbs-up.

"Resume!"

"And the tents of Moondoor will be bathed in blood as we unseat the Queen from the throne she stole from the rightful heir, the Shadow King! And you –"

Boltar tossed a soft red ball at the orc, hitting him in the forehead and cutting him off effectively. "Silentiem!"

"Serve your time with honour, heathen," Boltar told the orc coolly. He looked down at the wooden boards the orc stood on. "And if you need to use the chamber pot, stomp your feet – thrice."

He turned away, walking toward the brothers, his cowled hood drawn back over his head.

Dean held up a hand as Boltar approached. "Excuse me. Hi, you are a LARPer, yeah?"

Jerry looked away, his mouth tightening. "I prefer the term 'interactive literaturist'."

"Right," Dean said, nodding as he pulled out his identification. "I am Special Agent Rosewood, this is Special Agent Taggert, we just –"

Jerry winced. "Halt!"

Sam looked at him, brow crinkling as Jerry looked up at him, pulling his hood from his hair, his voice changing back to a high, rather light timbre and his face screwing up in an apologetic grimace.

"Guys, we're not doing the whole genre mash-up thing this weekend – we only do that every third month," he said, looking from Sam to Dean.

"Come again," Sam asked, leaning a little closer as Dean stared at Jerry in bewilderment.

Jerry looked down at the identification in their hands and smiled. "Your fake badges, the cheap suits," he said, looking at them pointedly. "It's very cool, I get it. Your characters are FBI agents who somehow travel to Moondoor, but I'm telling you, it's straight up Moondoor this weekend."

Sam smiled tightly. "These aren't fake badges."

"Ah, yeah they are," Jerry contradicted him, whisking it out from Sam's hand and looking at it carefully. "And they're very good, but … um, well the ID number shifted to ten digits with two letters mixed in with the end of the year, and um, the seal's from last month. Really good work," he said encouragingly as Sam grabbed the billfold back from him. "It's just that it's a tournament weekend, so we gotta follow the rules."

He watched them shove their IDs back into their jackets, his hands spread out helplessly.

"If there're no rules … chaos," he added, raising his hood back over his head. "Resume!"

In character again, Boltar looked at Dean, his voice dropping a couple of notes. "If you would like to join the Army of Moons, the Queen is always on the lookout for new squires."

Dean nodded. "Yes, we would like to see your Queen. Now, please."

"Well, the Queen's calendar is booked up months in advance," Boltar said loftily. "But if you wish to see what's in store for you in her army, her Highness is overseeing new squires on the pitch, as we speak."

Dean looked at his brother, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. Sam's mouth twisted up to one side as he nodded. They followed Boltar to the small, grassy arena, and stopped in the crowd that had surrounded the current bout. The swordsmen fighting were dressed in a mix of historical styles, Sam thought, one brow rising as he realised that under the flowing red and white surcoats of the Queen's army, there was a hell of a lot of padding. Wouldn't do much good in fighting with steel, but the wooden swords were themselves padded and wrapped in duct tape, and the under-padding would probably limit the bruising of a direct hit. The helmets were an odd choice. They were metal, probably just a light steel, but still adding weight high where it affected balance too much, and limiting the vision severely. The heavier man had his visor open, which defeated the purpose of the armour anyway.

The lighter of the two had a pauldron buckled over the shoulder of the leading arm, cut and stitched leather pieces, rather than metal or even boiled leather. He was quicker than his opponent, faster, and had a better technique, Dean thought critically, watching as the wooden swords swung up and around. Wasted energy on those dramatically swinging cuts, and the helmets were a disadvantage, blocking the peripheral vision. Sword and shield would have been a better choice, lighter, more vision and more manoeuvrability.

The lighter swordsman swung his blade around, trapping the other's and twisted an arm against the heavier man's arm, forcing him to the ground as the sword tip rested on his chest.

"Yield! I yield!" The man said, kneeling before his opponent.

_Yield? _Dean snorted softly. _Fight till you're dead, that was the only way to win_.

The victor lifted a gloved hand to the helmet and lifted it off, shaking loose a long fall of red hair over her shoulders. From the arena's sides, the crowd clapped, and the Queen stepped back from her opponent, turning slowly to look around at the faces of the people surrounding her.

"Grey Fox and Thargrim are missing," she said seriously. "We pray to the Goddess they have not fallen victim of foul play. In their absence, the honour guards' ranks are weakened. To join –" Charlie froze. In behind the first ranks of the crowd, two tall men in overcoats stood watching her. Two familiar tall men. Two men she'd hoped never to see, ever again.

"Oh … blerg," she said softly staring at them. She slowly became of aware of the restless shifting of the crowd and looked around, smiling nervously and trying to pull back the shreds of her character. "The Queen needs some royal 'we' time. Talk amongst thyselves."

Turning abruptly away from the crowd, the arena and the two men standing watching her, she walked fast across the grass to her tent.

Sam and Dean eased themselves out of the crowd and followed her across the arena, Dean stopping to pick up the two-handed wooden long sword Charlie's opponent had left lying there. He swung it up, looking along the line of the padded blade. "Not weighted properly," he muttered to himself.

Sam turned back and looked at him. "Dude!"

"Yeah," Dean said, following Sam into the tent.

Inside the royal tent, the walls had been lined with carnelian and gold silk, a cheap synthetic Persian carpet covered the floor and reproduction furniture provided a few home comforts for the Queen, who was standing by her bed, stuffing her belongings into an expandable, synthetic bag.

"Charlie," Sam said as Dean came in behind him.

"Charlie Bradbury is dead," Charlie cut him off sharply, not looking around as she wrestled with her possessions. "She died two years ago. You killed her."

She unbuckled the long straps of the leather vambrace around her sword-arm, her fingers fumbling with the small buckles. "My name is Carrie Heinlein. Oh, and guess what?" She turned around and looked at them. "Now you killed her too."

"Okay," Dean said quietly, looking around. "Listen –"

"No." Charlie said abruptly, not wanting to hear it. "I buried myself, then Dick Roman went down and his company went belly-up and I figured – hey, it's all good." She looked at him. "And I was fine. I got my life back. And now you're here. And if you guys are here, monsters are here."

She turned away from them, looking down into her bag, trying to think of what she needed to resume a life on the lam. "Why do I have such bad luck? What am I? Some kind of monster magnet?" The thought instantly brought another, much more frightening one and she spun around looking at them. "Is there such thing as a monster magnet?"

Sam opened his mouth and Charlie held up her hands to stop him. "You know what? Don't answer that. I don't care about that. What I care about is not getting my other arm broken. And not dying." She closed the bag, turning and walking toward them. "So, I'm dropping my sword and walking off the stage, bitches. Have fun storming the castle."

"Charlie," Dean said as she went by, raising his voice as she kept going. "Charlie!"

She stopped by the tent's opening and turned unwillingly back to him.

"Grey Fox and Thargrim – they're Ed and Lance. They're not missing," he said, brows drawn together. "They're dead."

She looked from Dean to Sam, who nodded.

"What happened?"

"Put your bag down, Charlie," Sam said, gesturing to the table behind them. "There's a bit to catch up on."

She dropped the bag and walked past Dean, sitting down at the small table, looking at their faces as they took the chairs to either side of her. Something told her that she didn't really want to hear this. Didn't want to get involved in this. She might or might not be a monster magnet … but the two men in her tent were definitely monster magnets and staying, even being within a hundred miles of them, was not going to be a good thing.

"Uh, Ed was found in his apartment, dismembered – somehow," Dean said, licking his lips as he looked at his brother. Sam nodded.

"Lance bled out, internals just ruptured, it looked like he was bleeding from the ears, eyes and mouth."

"Drawn and quartered … and bleeding out?" Charlie repeated to herself. "Please stop talking."

"Well, aside from the mark," Dean said, pushing the photograph of the tattoo across the table to her. "And them both being LARPers, there's really not much else to go on."

Charlie picked up the photograph, her eyes narrowing. "Wait, I've seen this before."

She looked up at Sam. "It's a Celtic magic symbol." She looked at Dean. "At least it was in my favourite video game. Does that help? Can I go now?"

Sam held up a hand. "It's a start but no. Listen, what can you tell us about Ed and Lance?"

She shook her head. "Good guys. Two of the best members of the Queen's ever-shrinking army."

"Ever-shrinking?" Dean looked at her questioningly.

"My kingdom has had a lot of bad luck lately," she told him bluntly. "Probably because of me." She picked up the photo, staring at it. She'd seen that tree somewhere else as well. "But maybe it's tied to this."

She looked at Sam. "A month ago, one of my guys had both of her ankles broken before battle. Before that, I had three people go to hospital where the accidents were at home. Think there's any connection there?"

"Did they have any enemies in common?" Sam asked.

"In real life, no. Everyone gets on famously. In the game though … they had tons of enemies," she said, getting to her feet and walking across the tent to another table. A map was spread over its surface, and a number of coloured figurines representing the forces of Moondoor were arranged over the map.

Charlie gestured to the table as Dean and Sam got up and followed her over. "Red group's the Followers of the Moon, my people." She leaned over the map. "Green's for Elves, blue's for Warriors of Yesteryear and black's for Shadow Orcs."

She looked from the map to Dean. "This weekend's the Battle of the Kingdoms, to see who wears the Forever Crown," she explained, looking back at the map. "This weekend each faction is definitely an enemy of me and mine."

Dean looked at the army placements, brows drawing together. "You know, if you move your archers back, and your broadswords more to the west …"

"Huh, to fight the warriors?" Charlie nodded.

"Yeah."

"Mmm … good call," she said, moving the pieces around.

"Thanks."

"What about this southern wall?"

"Guys!" Sam interrupted impatiently.

"Yeah?" Dean looked at him guiltily. "Right. Sorry."

"So," Sam straightened up, looking at Charlie. "Maybe someone from one of the other kingdoms got a hold of some real magic and started using it to weaken your army?"

Dean moved the scale trebuchet to the south of the red army across the map, nodding as he saw that Charlie had seen the move. He couldn't help it. He'd grown up on battle strategies, his father's bedtime stories of the battles of the Vietnam War, and of the world wars, hell, Dad had even studied the battles of the English and the French in their perpetual skirmishes on both sides of the English Channel. He'd replicated those battle strategies with his toy soldiers from the age of five and had learned to think in terms of strength and weaknesses, of terrain and weaponry and advantage and disadvantage. He wasn't sure that this setup was quite that organised, but a little strategic thinking didn't do any one any harm.

"But why not just come after me? And why the escalation? Broken ankles to dismemberment? That's …" Charlie looked up at him, unwilling to voice the rest of her thoughts on that.

"Alright, we will canvas the kingdoms," Dean said. "You should get out of here. We don't want you to get hurt."

"What? Wait," Sam interjected. "Charlie knows much more about Moondoor than we do. We need her."

"Sam, I think we can take care of a bunch of accountants with foam swords," Dean said flatly.

"We need all the help we can get, Dean. People are dying. It's not the accountants that are doing that."

"The point, that is usually yours, is that she should get somewhere safe, and get back to a normal life," Dean argued, his voice rising a little. _What was going with Sam?_ He was the one who'd been advocating normalcy since he'd been old enough to realise that their life wasn't.

"Hey! I am right here," Charlie interrupted, raising her hands between them. "And I want to leave."

"Thank you!" Dean said.

"But the Queen," Charlie continued reluctantly. "She has to stay. I mean, Sam is right, people are dying. That can't happen while I'm ruler. They're my people. And you know what?" She looked from Dean to Sam. "I am tired of running. I like my life here. I want to stay and fight for it."

Dean looked down at her exasperatedly. She wanted to fight for the life that was all about escaping, all about running from reality? He drew in a deep breath. One person's idea of normal and safe and secure didn't equate to another's. He knew that. His life had felt normal and secure, to him, at least, until Meg had taken it all away, all of his friends, every safe place they'd had. And the Yellow Eyed demon had taken his father.

Sam's phone rang and broke the silence between them. "Yeah … okay. Thanks."

He closed the phone and looked at his brother. "So, the toxicology report came back on Lance. No drugs, no rat poison. He was killed with _Sanguinaria Canadensis_."

Dean frowned. "Bloodroot?"

Sam nodded. "Report found no trace of the plant, but the other only thing that destroys the tissue cells like that is haemorrhagic fever. And he didn't have that."

"And they didn't find any physical evidence in Ed's apartment," Dean said. "This is magic, but what kind? Not witchcraft, what else is there?"

Sam shrugged. "Charlie, I'm going to need to borrow your laptop."

"There are no laptops in Moondoor." She looked up at his expression. "What? They're rules. But there is a tech tent, four tents down."

Sam swallowed the comment he was about to make and nodded. "Okay, how bout you guys go canvas and I'll dig into these accidents and the mark?"

He didn't wait for an answer, heading for the tent flap. Charlie turned back to Dean.

"Okay, I'm going to need the full wiki on where you guys have been, what you've been up to, but first, you're going to have ditch the suit if you're gonna walk and talk with the Queen." She smiled at the look on his face, turning away.

"Costume? Charlie, I don't think so."

"Rules are rules, Dean. Besides, you want to blend in, right? Look like you belong here?" She didn't wait for an answer to that, walking to the doorway and looking out. Melitta, who'd been serving her quite well as the Queen's assistant, was standing patiently outside.

"Melitta, I need a squire's outfit in a … uh, men's L-tall – 45 – 37."

She ducked back into the tent, turning to look at him. "That's about right, isn't it?"

He shook his head. "Yeah, about right."

"Good," she said, sitting down at the table. "So, sit, talk … what happened – and don't spare the details."

_The little sister I never wanted_, he thought dryly, standing awkwardly by the table. "Uh, yeah, so not doing this, Charlie."

Her eyebrows rose. "Why not?"

He looked around the tent, and gestured at the brocade-covered bed and the portrait above it. "This is a bit much, isn't it?"

Charlie followed his gaze, smiling. "All perks of being the Queen – of which there are many, some that would surprise you."

"I doubt that," he said, turning as a young woman in a simple, full-length gown, holding an armful of clothing, came in through the inner doorway.

"Uh, your Highness, I have the clothing for the squire."

"Thank you, Melitta. Just put them on the bed." Charlie gestured vaguely in the direction of the bed. Dean moved aside as Melitta walked past him. He could see leather, suede, fabric, the soft, dull gleam of chain-mail links, boots … he sighed inwardly.

"Is this really necessary?" He looked at the clothes when Melitta had left. "I mean –"

"No, it's not necessary. You can keep wearing the douchey suit and no one will talk to you, your choice," she said, looking at what he was wearing.

"Fine." He walked to the edge of the bed, pulling off his coat and jacket, yanking impatiently at the tie around his neck. "We ganked Roman."

"Yeah, that much the papers told me," she said sardonically. "After that?"

He looked through the clothing, leaning against the edge of the bed. "You gonna watch me?"

She laughed. "You think either of us are likely to get in trouble if I do?"

He exhaled gustily and turned away. "I went to Purgatory, got sucked down by Roman as he died. Sam tried looking for me, but couldn't find a way in and he met a girl."

"Are you kidding me?" Charlie sat up, staring at him. He shrugged, dropping the business shirt on the bed and picking up the soft, lightweight cotton shirt, pulling it over his head.

"Nope." He turned to look at her. "Whose story did you want to hear?"

"Both!" She leaned against the back of the chair. "What – what's Purgatory?"

"Hell for monster souls," he said shortly, undoing his belt and stepping out of the pants as they puddled around his feet.

"How'd you get out?"

"Long story."

She sighed. "Alright, Sam fell in love? For real?"

"Yeah, seemed like that," he said, eyeing the leather pants sourly. "I got jeans in the car, can't I just –"

"No," she said firmly. "No denim in times of yore. Besides they're more comfortable than they look."

He bit back the comment that rose to mind and pulled them on. They were going to be hot, he thought. But at least they weren't as tight as he'd thought they'd be.

"So what happened with you and Sam?" she asked, leaning back against the table.

"What do you mean?" he hedged, grabbing the soft leather boots and dragging them on.

"Come on, Dean," Charlie said reasonably. "The two of you barely look at each other, a disagreement escalates to an argument in thirty seconds, neither of you knows who's leading and who's following – something happened."

"To be honest, I don't know exactly what happened," he said, turning around and picking up the suede over-shirt. "And I sure as hell can't describe it."

He pulled the shirt over his head, grimacing at the soft clanging of chain-mail that had been stitched to the shoulders, hanging over his right shoulder and chest. _Please_.

"I might've ridden him a little hard when I got out," he said, mostly to himself. "He didn't tell me he'd looked for a way to get me out of there, and I couldn't believe that he hadn't." He looked at the lacing up the front of the shirt, and tugged at it.

"Hang on, I'll do that," Charlie said, getting up and walking over to him. She adjusted the rawhide lacing through the holes and drew the edges together. "It's annoying to start with, but you get used to it."

"Yeah," he said distractedly, looking past her. "He told me that he just ran and he found this girl, and apparently, she helped." He shrugged as she stepped back, looking at her efforts and leaning over to pass him the long studded belt.

"You don't believe him?"

"No, that's not it. I do," he said, tying off the long, loose end in a knot. The belt held a pouch over his hip and he settled it flat, retrieving his phone, wallet, keys and gun and sticking them into it. "It was over by the time I got out, but he wasn't over it, you know?"

Charlie sat down again, sighing. "Oh yeah, I know."

He glanced at her, mouth quirking up at one corner slightly. "Anyway, we had this hunt, a little while ago, and I needed him out of the way."

He picked up one of the leather vambraces that lay on the bed, wrapping the curving leather guard around his forearm and winding the long straps around and through the buckles.

"I sent him a text, spoofing the caller, saying she needed help," he said, tightening the strap through the buckle and smoothing it down. "And he took off."

"You sent Sam a phantom text from his ex?" She looked at him disbelievingly. "Dick move, sir."

"Yeah," he said, tightening the other vambrace around his arm and buckling it. "Not my finest hour."

He wasn't going into the details with Charlie. And he didn't need to justify what he'd done. It'd worked. Sam had gone and it'd been for nothing anyway, really. Martin had fucked up Benny's life adequately on his own.

"So, he found some normalcy with this chick, and now it's gone. Again. Thanks to you," she said, leaning across the table.

Dean glanced at her. "I didn't tell him to break up with her, Charlie. I told him to go back, if that's what he wanted."

"But he didn't," she said, looking up at him. "Why not?"

_Sam's story, not his_, Dean thought uneasily. "I don't know, you'd have to ask him."

"This really sucks out loud, Dean."

"Yeah, well now he's more committed than ever. So … there's that." He rubbed a hand over his jaw, shrugging slightly. "I mean, trust me, this life, you can't afford attachments. You just gotta … let go." He looked away, his exhale audible as he shoved the thought that accompanied that sentiment well down deep.

Charlie looked at him thoughtfully. "Are we still talking about Sam, or did you break up with someone too?"

He looked at her uncomfortably. "Me?"

"Yeah."

"No." He turned away, going back to the bed to get the long, two-handed wooden sword. It had been a betrayal, not a 'break up'. It had been watching a man who could barely swim, who'd done nothing wrong but be who he was, drifting out of sight and not even throwing out a life-ring. It'd been saying that there was no room for anyone or anything in his life that couldn't be jettisoned if that's what it took.

Charlie looked at the tension in his back and shoulders. "You sure, Dean?"

"Yeah, I'm sure," he said heavily, gesturing impatiently the doorway of the tent. "Let's get out of here … your Highness."

* * *

Sam looked at the tent opening.

"Beware: This is a gateway to the future," the sign beside the flap read.

He sighed and pushed through the flap, stopping as he took in the tables full of PCs, elves and orcs and warriors sitting in their costumes playing online games and reading their emails and following the stock market. Escape from the escape, he wondered? What could these people possibly have in their lives that it needed the double-whammy?

There was a free computer near the back of the tent and he walked around to it, sitting down next to a young woman in a full, peasant-ey kind of costume. The screen activated when he moved the mouse, and he realised he didn't know what he was looking for.

"Excuse me," he said, turning to the blonde next to him. "Do you know if there's a directory of online players?"

She looked up and over to him. "Yeah, it's on the website. All you need is an account to access it."

Sam looked at the screen, nodding. "Uh, thanks … um."

"Marie," she said, smiling at him warmly before she realised she'd slipped out of character. Again. "I mean, Gallandrea … the Wicked," she added, rolling her eyes slightly.

He looked back at his screen, smiling nervously. Setting up the account took a couple of minutes and he looked through the list of players, noting the names of those who were out of play. He logged into the local police database and searched by name, bringing up the case files of the players. The police had been as thorough as they could be, he thought wearily, looking at the photographs of the reported injuries. Phyllis Norton. Broken ankles. Jamie Parker had multiple puncture wounds over his face, head and shoulders … and a tattoo of the tree on his arm. Michelle Bump had a broke nose, two black eyes, contusions over the ribcage. Assault, mostly. Until Ed.

He became aware that Marie was leaning slightly toward him, her gaze glued to his screen. "It's all just part of the game," he said quickly as she leaned closer.

"Genre mash-up," she nodded, looking at the screen. "Cool."

Sam shifted the mouse and she suddenly leaned much closer, staring at one of the photographs. "Hey, I know her, that's Phyllis. I heard she broke her ankles or something."

Sam frowned, clicking on the file to enlarge it. The photographs of Phyllis' ankles were large and clear. Both feet were pointing in a way that nature had not intended.

Sam stared at them. "Wow, it looks like she got –"

"Hobbled," Marie finished the sentence with a grimace, looking at the next picture as Sam minimised the case file again. "And that's Jamie … he said someone broke in, beat him with his own mace, but –"

"No signs of a forced entry," Sam read the file notes, frowning. He looked at Marie, enlarging Jamie's case file so that the tattoo was clearly visible. "Do you recognise this from Moondoor? I think it's Celtic?"

"No." She stared at the tattoo. "Sorry. But I'll look it up?"

"Thanks." He looked back at the screen as he heard her begin to type. "Mace attacks, hobbling, medieval poisoning … someone's targeting the Queen's people."

Marie looked at the images that her search had listed, shaking her head as she glanced back at Sam. "No, not only them. Those four, are with the Queen. But these two? They're elves," she said, leaning over and pointing at two others who'd suffered attacks. "And those, they're warriors."

She looked at him. "The only group not to get hit are the Shadow Orcs."

She looked back at the images filling the screen. "Got it. Here."

* * *

Dean looked at the plain wooden sword leaning up against the tent's small veranda rail as they came out, swapping it for the padded foam one he was carrying. It felt a little better, the weight more even, although the hilt should've been heavier still for balance.

Sliding the long sword through his belt, he faltered as a woman walked towards them, bowing as she approached Charlie. Charlie inclined her head in response and the woman walked past them without stopping.

"You always been into LARPing?" he asked her curiously.

"Nah … the role-play I prefer is table-top. All in your imagination. D&D, Gamma World, Car Wars. That's why Cthulhu invented multi-sided dice, right?"

He looked away. _How the hell should he know?_ He'd only recognised one word in her last sentence. _Cthulhu_. And that one only because Bobby'd talked about the books endlessly when they were trying to find the way into Purgatory. The memory bit down at him and he shoved it aside.

"But a buddy of mine was into LARPing. It seemed like a good, closed kind of community to lose myself in. It's an escape. I mean, here, I'm Queen, a hero," she said, smiling slightly. "Out there in the real world, I'm just hacking out code and chugging coffee all day long."

Dean stopped as he heard the resignation in her voice. "Now, wait a second," he said, looking at her when she stopped and faced him. "If it wasn't for you, we would never have been able to take down Dick Roman. Out there, in the real world … Charlie, you are a hero."

"Why … thank you, kind sir," she said, smiling as she looked down.

He stared at her, seeing the – what? – relief? – pleasure? – under the lightly spoken words. She'd helped, a lot. Maybe they hadn't said that much to her when they'd seen her off at the bus station. Maybe they didn't say thanks often enough, to the people who were a small part of their lives. Maybe he needed to think about doing that more.

"Yeah, well, I'm not great at saying stuff at the right times," he said, turning back to the path.

"You know, for an anti-social, hard-as-nails, don't-give-a-damn hunter, you don't do too badly at all."

"Hmm." He looked around at the people walking this way and that along the grassy road. "Where do we start?"

"With the elves," Charlie said, nodding down the way slightly. He turned and saw a small, slender woman talking to a taller, equally slender man several yards from them.

Charlie walked over to them and the taller elf nodded and withdrew.

"It's Glassada, isn't it?" Charlie smiled at the woman, whose green and grey clothing suited her olive skin.

"_Suil, rhien-Bereth_," Glassada said softly, bowing before her.

"Ah, in English, if you please, Glassada," she said, glancing back to Dean. "My … um … kinsman has no knowledge of Sindarin."

"As you wish," the elf said, glancing at him briefly. "How may I serve you?"

"We are looking for this symbol," Dean said, stepping forward and handing the girl the police photograph of the tree tattoo. "Have you seen it?"

Glassada took the photograph by the edges, studying the image. She looked at Charlie, shaking her head.

"I have not seen a mark like this in my travels throughout the realm, your Highness," she said.

Charlie nodded, taking the photograph from her. "Thank you, may your travels be easy and your arrows fly true."

Glassada's mouth tucked in at the corners and she bowed again, withdrawing a few feet and then turning and leaving.

"Well, scratch the elves off the list," Charlie said, handing the photograph back to Dean.

"Based on what one said?" He frowned as he watched the slender girl walk away.

"She's the most capable archer and hunter they have," Charlie said, watching her go as well. "And she's been through this forest. If any of them knew of it, it would be her."

"Alright. Who's next?"

"Warriors of Yesteryear," Charlie said, pointing to a separate encampment a few hundred yards away.

"And their story is?" He sighed as they changed direction and headed toward the camp.

"Oh, well, kind of Viking thing, really," Charlie said, shrugging.

"Viking-Braveheart-LOTR thing maybe," she revised as they passed a warrior whose costume consisted of a ragged and dirty kilt, chain-mail vest, a great axe held by a broad, leather band slung diagonally over shoulder and chest, and sheepskin boots, bound tightly to his calves with rawhide. The wild, dark brown hair was held back at the forehead by another rawhide tie, and charcoal had been rubbed along the man's cheeks and jawline in place of stubble. Dean rubbed his jaw reflexively, wondering at the wig and make-up. Surely it broke the escapism of the place to get into that every day?

They came up between two tents made of cow skins and Charlie stopped in front of a group of several men and women, wearing a variety of leather, skins, leather and metal armour and carrying everything from bows and arrows and swords to chunky maces and axes.

"My Lady," the largest man there said, walking to her and bowing his head. His gaze flicked over Dean dismissively.

"Alrek, my greetings, faithful ally," Charlie said formally. "Your warriors have travelled the kingdoms extensively; I would ask if you have seen this image, anywhere in your travels?" She held out her hand to Dean without looking at him, and he suppressed the urge to snap at her as he pulled the photo from the pouch at his hip. The Queen-courtier thing was getting kind of old. He put the photo into her hand and she passed it to the warrior.

Alrek took the photograph and gestured to the group behind him. "Has anyone seen this mark in the land?"

Dean watched their faces as they shook their heads. Accountants? Secretaries? Lawyers? What did these people do every day from nine-to-five that made camping out and dressing up such an imperative for their free time, he wondered? It was a difference, he guessed, to sitting home, watching TV, sitting on the computer or whatever it was that normal people did when they weren't working.

The man to the left of him was dressed in the light-weight alloy chain-mail, a leather jerkin over it, and some kind of softer clothes underneath. The wide leather belt at his waist held a scabbard for his sword, something that looked a little like a claidheamh mòr, and another for the long, straight knife that rested behind his hip. Neither weapon was real, or even steel, both made from wood or foam, taped to resemble a metal colouring. Beside him, a tall woman stood in a costume that must have been freezing in colder weather, a few scant pieces of leather over her breasts, joined together by silver mesh. Her legs were bare, sheepskin wrapped around the calves and bound … her arms too, except for a leather pauldron that was supposed to protect her sword arm. He looked at all the fatal targets that were clearly visible and vulnerable on her body and sighed inwardly. Too much Conan, not enough common-sense.

"Your Highness, this mark is unknown to us. Is there danger?" Alrek handed Charlie the photograph and she passed it to Dean.

"I believe that it is, Alrek," Charlie said quietly. "Tell your people to go in pairs, to stay together."

He nodded and she turned away, sighing. "Three down, one to go. Last group on the list, the Shadow Orcs. Impossible to find."

"Wait." Dean stopped. "I know where we can find one; I met him on the way in."

"Perfect," Charlie said, looking up at him. "Maybe he can tell us what the frack this thing is?"

"Come on, he was near the road," Dean said, turning around and heading in the other direction. "He was in … uh … some kind of restraint."

"The stocks?" She hurried to catch up with his longer stride. "Head and hands?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Well, he won't be going anywhere then."

* * *

Marie clicked on the image and the website loaded. Sam looked at it. "The Tree of Pain. If you are tagged with this mark, you'll be a victim of fairy magic."

"Wait … fairy magic can be bad?"

Sam snorted, recovering himself as he saw her expression. "Uh, yeah, every kind of magic can be good or bad."

"Huh, I thought fairies were always … you know, helpful. Good."

In his memories, a voice came back to him, wry and amused and evil. _We faery folk? We're all about energy. I'm talking about real magic, sonny. From my side of the fence._

"No, and there's always a price to pay," he said softly. Dean could see them. He'd been there and back and they couldn't hide from him any more.

He pulled out his phone, hitting the speed dial. The phone went to voicemail and he closed it again, turning slightly in his chair to offer a goodbye smile to Marie.

"Alright. Well, thank you very much … Gallandrea."

"Anytime." She smiled widely at him. "I've never done genre mash-up before. That was – fun."

"First time for everything, right?" he said, getting to his feet and walking behind her.

"First time for a lot of things if you want to come by my tent later?" she said quickly as he reached the aisle between the tables.

Sam looked down. Was there something painted on his forehead that everyone but him could see? Something that said, wounded man here … offer services? It was the third offer he'd had in two weeks, after … hell … after years of offers coming damned few and far between. He looked at her, wondering if he was overreacting. Probably. Seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

"Some other time," he said, aware from her expression that what he'd meant had been received loud and clear. He turned away. There were times when he wished he was more like his brother. Love 'em and leave 'em and don't even worry about names or any other irrelevant details.

* * *

"Death to the Queen! Death to the usurper!" Monty yelled as Dean and Charlie walked toward him.

Dean frowned, pulling the long wooden sword from his belt automatically. A glance at the woman walking beside him showed her unmoved by the orc's threats.

"Death to her manservant," Monty added, spraying spit across the grass. Dean tapped the sword on the back of his head, once, with feeling, glancing back at Charlie.

Charlie looked at him and the sword pointedly.

"What? If there's no laptops in Moondoor, then there's no Geneva Convention either," he said defensively as she rolled her eyes at him. He looked back at the man held in the stocks.

"Hey," He pulled out the photograph from the pouch and held in front of Monty's face. "Seen this?"

Monty glanced at it and nodded. "Yeah, of course …"

He stopped, noticing the interest on Dean's face. "No – no – nope, I haven't seen it," he said, looking away.

Dean lifted the long sword up, until the blunt edge rested under the orc's jaw. He exerted just a little more pressure and Monty's hands twitched.

"Okay, it's the Shadow King's family crest," he admitted quickly. "You'll never find him in the Black Hills."

"The Black Hills?" Dean repeated, turning to Charlie.

"The forest behind the playground," Charlie said, nodding. "Come on."

She turned and started to run and Dean followed her through the tents and down past the play equipment, to a broad path that ran into the small conifer and birch forest on the other side of the field.


	23. Chapter 23 Being Heroes

**Chapter 23 Being Heroes**

* * *

Dean looked around as the trees closed in a little more to the sides of the path, the canopies closing overhead. "You get that this isn't real life, right?"

She looked at him, walking quickly to keep up with him. "You don't think this is better?"

He snorted. "Better than my life? Sure. Better than a regular life … I don't know. Why is regular life so boring you want play make-believe?"

"It's not that it's boring … so much," she said slowly, looking down at the path at her feet. "More that … there's no honour in regular life, no brave deeds seen by others, no sense that good will overcome evil … I don't know."

He was silent for a moment, feeling, hearing, tasting the forest around them. There was nothing there but them, for the moment anyway. Replaying what she'd said, he felt an old wound open up inside of him. He'd thought that way once too.

"Maybe there isn't any good, Charlie," he said quietly. "Maybe that's just a – just a fantasy to begin with? Maybe there's just monsters and people and nothing else, no one looking out for you so you have to look out for yourself."

She slowed, turning to look at him intently. "One day, you're going to tell me what happened to you."

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, humourlessly. "No. I'm not."

"Trust me, you are," she pressed. "No one can just walk on their own, no friends, no one to share anything with. You need it more than even Sam does."

"No. I don't," he said irritated by the assertion. "You don't know anything about me."

"You'd be surprised by how much I know about you," she countered.

He looked away, pulling out his phone and holding it up, trying to find a signal. She didn't, he knew. Didn't know a goddamned thing about him and never would. He heard her exasperated huff from beside and kept his gaze fixed on his phone screen. He didn't need people. Didn't need them for anything, but he definitely didn't need them to dump his load on and share his crap with. That was a quick path to betrayals he couldn't afford.

The crack of a twig was loud in the ensuing silence and Dean's head snapped around to look up at the path at the man who was walking toward them.

"There you are, my Queen," Boltar said, holding out his hands toward them. "Has this oaf attempted to harm you with his blasphemous metalworks?"

"Boltar, he's with me," Charlie said quickly, glancing down at the phone Dean still held. "He's my new … um …"

"Bodyguard," Dean supplied, looking steadily at Boltar.

Boltar raised a questioning eyebrow at the Queen and she nodded. He inclined his head to Dean reluctantly.

"We seek an audience with the Shadow King," Charlie added.

Boltar looked at her worriedly. "Oh, these hills are not safe. I beseech you, my Queen, you should return to camp."

"He's right," Dean said abruptly, looking down as Charlie pinned him with a glare and he realised that Boltar was staring at him as well. "Your … uh … worship-fulness. May I have a moment, before you take your leaving?"

"Mmm." Charlie nodded and turned away from Boltar with him. They walked down the path the way they'd come for a few yards.

"You take my phone, find Sam. We'll find the shadow-dorks," he said in a low voice.

"But I can help," Charlie protested, taking the phone as he passed it to her.

"Yeah, you are helping, by finding Sam. Go," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the camp. She looked at him, mouth compressing in an expression he was starting to recognise. _Don't have time for this shit, Charlie_, he thought and something fleeting caught the edge of his peripheral vision, a rainbow twist of light that he'd seen, once before. He turned, catching another glimpse, a wild face, surrounded by white hair, then it was gone.

"Did you see that?" he asked and Charlie looked at him, brows drawing together.

"See what?"

* * *

Behind them, Boltar drew something from his pouch, turning his back to the path and closing his eyes.

"Make it all real," he whispered.

For a moment, nothing happened, then the air thickened, becoming richer, sweeter, wilder, filling his senses with scents and tastes that he'd never imagined before. The trees surrounding the path grew taller and darker, the canopies thickening as they closed over the path completely.

* * *

_**Muindur**_

Dean looked up and around as the light changed, and the noises of the forest ceased. "What the –"

Beside him, Charlie stepped back, her arms lifting as the armour she wore, the clothes under and over it, changed, the textures coarser, rougher against her skin. She looked up and saw the tree trunks thickening, the gloom in the forest deepening. Around them, the land moved, rising to a serrated series of shadowy hills to the north, mist rising from the ground in the forest to either side of them.

Dean felt the chain-mail change over his chest and shoulder, becoming longer and heavier. Against his belt, the sword became heavier as well, and he looked down, the double-handed hilt now metal, wrapped in a leather binding, darkened with sweat.

"What's going on?" Charlie whispered to him, staring around.

He shook his head. "I don't know, but whatever killed those guys, I think it's here, now."

He looked back at the man on the path, seeing him standing still, head bowed. A prickle ran up the nerves along the back of his neck, and he turned back to Charlie.

"Come on, we gotta get outta here," he said, reaching for her arm and dragging her along the path.

"Yeah, I think you're right," she agreed, her voice barely audible.

From the left, he heard the crackle of movement in the undergrowth, the slur of boots over the ground, the sigh of foliage pushed aside. Dammit, he thought, moving faster, pushing Charlie ahead of him.

"Got your sword?" he asked her in a low voice. She shook her head.

The noises were louder now, closer to the edge of the trees, to the path. "Alright, stay behind me, you just keep me in between you and them, you got that?"

"Between you and what?" Charlie squeaked, her eyes widening as she looked from one side of the path to the other.

"Them," Dean said, pulling the sword free of his belt with a singing of the metal along leather, hoping like hell that the metal blade was a lot sharper than the wooden one had been.

The orc dropped from the bank beside the path with a bloodcurdling shriek, greenish-black leathern skin puckered and sagging, pointed yellow teeth dripping saliva, black eyes gleaming in the dim light that was all the forest was letting through. The remnants of clothing fluttered about its misshapen body, but the sword it held was long, the black metal glistening with ichor as the creature swung it toward him and he met the razor edge with his own blade.

The clash sent Charlie scurrying backward, trying to look behind her at the same time as she kept an eye on Dean and the – _orc!_ – monster he was fighting. She'd seen a leviathan devour a human. She'd seen a ghost throw a leviathan into a wall. She should be able to deal with this.

Dean drove the orc's sword downwards, and turned sharply, disengaging his blade and swinging it around the other way, and the monster's head bounced several feet along the path by the time the body had dropped, dripping a dark green blood from the clean cut through the neck.

"Charlie? You there?" he said, unable to look behind him, his gaze shifting along the tree trunks and undergrowth to either side of the path.

"Yeah, still here," she said, her eyes darting frantically back and forth, freezing on a patch of bracken as she saw it shiver violently. "Dean!"

He heard the rustle and stepped back and around, the long sword hissing as it cleaved the air, ending in a deep thunk when it found the orc's skull. Yanking it free of the bone, he didn't have time to think about anything further, memory and training controlling the sword, the automatic reactions to the movement of the monsters, one down, another three dropping from the high banks to the path, one part of his mind tracking the sounds that Charlie was making just out of his vision, another focussed entirely on attack, parry, block, swing, cut, thrust. His father had taught them the basics of swordsmanship in their teenage years, sparring with split bamboo swords that hurt like hell but did no permanent damage. It'd been a long time, but the reactions that had been drilled into them, drilled into his nerves and muscles and memories came back without hesitation.

He took the last two in a flurry of strokes, the one flowing smoothly into the next, his concentration so acute that the orcs seemed to be cooperating, stepping into his blade without him having to see where they were. He looked around, the blade raised, and found himself alone on the path. In the forest, mist and darkness filled the spaces between the huge trees, moisture dripping silently from leaf to ground, and he couldn't hear anything but a deep, welling silence.

"Charlie!"

He spun around, looking the other way. "CHARLIE!"

His voice was swallowed and muffled by the trees and mist, and there was no answer at all.

* * *

Sam turned in a slow circle outside of the tech tent, his brow creasing up as he watched the tents waver and flicker around him. Under his feet, the grassy road became hard, cobbled with small stones, and around him log huts and stone houses and rough-sawn timber barns filled the spaces where the tents had been. His coat, his suit were heavier, rougher and he looked down at himself, seeing tanned leather pants, tucked into heavy boots, a thick belt wrapped around his hips, the weight of a long steel sword dragging to one side, rough homespun against his skin, pressed down by the thick, boiled leather cuirass and pauldron over his right shoulder. The printout in his hand roughened and he watched it turned from toner and paper to ink and parchment, his eyes widening at the sight. The holster in the small of his back had been transformed into a sheath, and his fingers felt the hilt of a knife that was held there, where his gun had been.

The LARPers were gone. In their places, tall, svelte elves walked, dressed in the woodland colours of olive and dove and sand and umber; wearing long, hooded cloaks that lifted as they stopped and turned; with long, fine hair in shades of chestnut and oak, ash and maple, ebony and ivory, braided back to avoid catching on the graceful bows and arrow-filled quivers hanging over shoulder and back.

The Queen's people were dressed in the drab earthen colours of the land and soil and crops, their faces and hands dirty, the weapons slung casually at their hips, solid and deadly and well-used. Where the tech tent had been, a long, low stone and timber building stood, its hipped roof sagging slightly in the centre, the thick thatch pierced in several places by stone chimneys that released streamers of grey and white smoke into the cool, blue sky.

_What the –_

Real magic. The thought stole in. Faery magic.

He looked down the twisting, cobbled road, walking fast through the thin crowd of people, the scents of cooking fat, of leather being tanned and dyed, the acrid bite of ironworking and the ubiquitous stench of dung and wet mud filling his nostrils. He could see several oxen, pulling carts filled with hay in the fields to one side, could see a small group of riders, heading down another partially paved and gravelled road leading south and west. Heading for the Warriors village, he wondered?

Where they'd walked in that morning, from the parking lot by the edge of the playground, there was nothing but fields and forest and hills, closer to the village, a chequered vista of small farmsteads. The parking lot was gone. The cars that had been there had gone. A dozen wagons sat in the space, several with horses hitched to them, others with their shafts dropped to the ground. Sam looked around carefully, seeing the battered and black-painted wagon that was taking up the slot where Dean had parked the Impala. He couldn't let his brother see this, he thought irrelevantly, close to panic. Couldn't let him see what his beloved car had become.

A guttural snarl came from his right and he turned to look at the creature that was trapped in the stocks. This morning, that'd been Monty. Now the head was longer than human, the ears rising above the skull were twisted and pointed. The skin was slick and hard-looking, a greyish-greenish colour, the eyes that were fixed on him were black.

"Death to the Queen," it growled. "Death to humankind."

He looked at the upward pointing tusks to either side of the mouth, the pointed and blackened teeth in between them. No doubt now that they were fixed to that slab jaw, unable to fall out. He turned away.

If the elves and orcs had become … real … what else? A shout from behind a row of small, mud and frame houses on the other side of the road dragged his gaze in that direction and he ran down a narrow laneway between the row and a roofed but open barn.

Six or seven people stood in a loose circle around another pair of men. One man held a sword and shield, the other was dressed in a full-length cloak of dark material, a slender stick held in one hand.

"Wait –" Sam shouted, running toward them. The mage lifted and dropped the wand as the warrior dodged to one side, his shield angled sharply, the polished mirror centre deflecting the crawling blue lightning that had emerged from the wand's tip from himself and into the ground. He rolled to his feet within a few feet of the mage, the broadsword in his hand swinging long and fast and the mage jumping back as the sword passed within an inch of his legs.

The next downswing of the wand encased the warrior in a coruscating ball of blue fire. Sam skidded to an awkward stop, staring as the warrior's head arched back, fire filling his eyes and mouth, his sword and shield held in tightly clenched fists, his feet rising slowly from the ground. The mage whipped the wand to one side and the warrior was flung in the same direction, the ball of enclosing flame vanishing as he hit the ground.

_Perfect_, Sam thought, running a hair through his hair in frustration. Dean and Charlie could be anywhere, facing anything out there, and he had no means of finding them. He looked down at the parchment still held in his hand. God knew what his phone had been turned into at the moment of transformation.

* * *

"Charlie!" Dean yelled as he jogged through along the path, uncaring of bringing more orcs down.

"Sir, keep your voice down or you will bring us to ruin," a voice hissed from the side of the path. Dean stopped and turned, seeing Boltar's face emerge from a clump of bracken.

"Did you see what happened?" he asked the man. Boltar shook his head.

"An orc attacked me, and I – I fought it off, but I was thrown against the tree and when I awoke, it had gone and I thought you and her Majesty had returned to the village."

He climbed out of the bracken and down to the path, straightening the surcoat. Dean noted without surprise that the colours were darker now, the cloth not as fine as it had been. Boltar looked much the same, however, the watery, pale blue eyes wide in the fair-skinned face, his expression not so overtly superior anymore.

_Might need the oaf to keep him safe_, Dean thought with a sour amusement. "Come on, Cha– her Highness, the Queen, has been taken by the, uh, enemy and we need to find out where."

"Yes, you might be right," Boltar agreed immediately, looking warily around at the forest. "She might've run for the village, while you were fighting."

Dean looked at him. "Possibly. If not, there's someone there we can question."

He turned and started up the path again at a steady run, the sword in its scabbard bouncing against his thigh with every stride. If she had been taken by the orcs, he thought, he was going to need some better armour and a shield, at least. His gun had gone, replaced by the long knife. He needed back up as well.

Behind him, Boltar's panting breaths were clearly audible as the man tried to keep up. It'd only been a few hundreds yards when they'd come into the forest from the playground, but he'd already gone that far with no sign that the forest was letting up. Real magic, he thought, remembering the rainbow glimpse just before everything had changed. That had been a faery, he'd recognised it from the last time. And it meant that all bets were off.

* * *

Sam walked back up the road toward the – what had been – the tech tent. A faded and peeling painted wooden sign was swinging gently from the roof now and he slowed down to read it. The Boar's Head Inn. Complete with a gruesomely realistic rendition of a severed boar's head. Charming.

He walked past as the door opened and two men walked out, the gust of scent from the doorway, of hops and fermenting wine, roasting meat and sour sweat, matched the scents that blew back to him from the men. Walking behind them, he watched their slightly unsteady progress over the uneven cobbles of the road, slowing as they approached an elven woman, standing on her own.

"Pretty little elf," one of the men crooned to her.

Sam saw her turn around, and blinked at the sight of her face. It was a face of great beauty, but the perfect symmetry of the features, the long, almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, pointed chin and flawless, porcelain skin were not, by any stretch of the imagination, human.

"Got a kiss, pretty elf?" The other man flanked her, and Sam reached for the hilt of the sword that hung by his side.

She moved in a blur, behind the first man with a long, delicate blade at his throat, the second man staring in drunken disbelief at his two missing fingers, and his blood dripping slowly to the road.

"Go home, humans, before you lose any more tonight," she said, and her voice was high and sweet, like the notes of a flute. She pushed the man in front of her away and stepped back, her head turning slightly.

"You too," she said to Sam over her shoulder as the men stumbled off up the road.

"I'm, uh, not with them," Sam said pacifically, releasing the sword hilt and holding his hands up, empty and palms out.

She turned and looked at him, her lips curled in a sneer. "You are all alike."

He couldn't help the slightly strangled laugh that came out. "Yeah, not really."

With a flowing movement, the sword in her hand was sheathed and she looked at him, hands tucked into the front of her belt.

"If you're in danger here, why did you come?" Sam asked curiously.

"Some of us still feel the old ways, the old ties to the royal seat of Muindur," she answered diffidently, lifting a hand to gesture slightly in the direction of the royal tent. Sam followed the gesture and saw a small castle where the tent had been, battlements and turrets carrying pennants with Charlie's crest, flying in the breeze.

"I thought the four kingdoms were separate?"

"A long time ago, we were the allies of the peoples of this land. We were one race, with our own powerful magic and we tended the earth and all livings things that dwelled upon it. We swore fealty to the King of men, here in the valley of Never, and all was peaceful and good."

"What happened?" Sam stepped closer to the elf, losing himself in her mellifluous voice, in the depths of her golden eyes. She was almost his height and that added a strange frisson to the odd attraction he felt.

"We were betrayed," she said, her voice hardening. "The Sindar were divided for a thousand years, until we were almost two different peoples, the Silvan, who live in the woods and the valleys, and the Noldor, who live high in the mountains to the east." She shook her head slightly, dropping her gaze to her hands. "There is a prophecy, recited from generation to generation. A Queen to reunite us and the kingdom of Muindur."

She looked at him, her eye level barely below his. "So, some of us still come here, to talk to the Queen, hoping that she might be the one."

_Charlie?_ Sam thought, struggling to keep his doubts from his face. Or had the magic slipped them into a parallel universe, where the kingdoms were somehow real, Moondoor – Muindur – and the game was life here?

"Have you seen this symbol?" He held out the parchment to the elf. She looked down at it and back to him, her eyes darkening slightly.

"Yes, it is the mark of the Shadow King," she said, thrusting the parchment back at him, her expression suddenly wary.

"My brother and I, uh, we are hunting the evil that plagues this land," he said, hoping it would be enough of an explanation.

"Evil does not come from the orcs," she said. "But from he that controls them."

"Who controls them?"

"I've seen a vision, in the fire, in the water, in the mists of the river," she lowered her voice. "A man, I think, he has the visage of a man, robed and hooded, and he holds a tome of magic, using it to control the _Sidhe_."

_Huh_, Sam thought. That put a different slant on things. He wasn't sure if that was going to help or not.

He heard boots on the road behind him and turned, seeing Dean running toward him, the panting and stumbling Boltar staggering along in his wake.

"Sam, Charlie's been taken," Dean said, stopping and dragging in a deep breath. Sam turned back to the elf but she had gone, not even the softest footfall audible.

"In the forest?" He looked back at his brother. Dean nodded as Boltar came up to them.

"The orcs, in the forest, all real now."

"Everything's real now," Sam said, gesturing around the authentic and undeniably solid village. "We'll check Charlie's digs, to make sure she didn't get back on her own."

"We need better armour, and more weapons," Dean agreed, following Sam up the road. "What the hell happened?"

"Hard to say," Sam said pensively. "Someone here is controlling a faery, with a spell. The faery either transformed our world into a fantasy LARPers game, or shifted this whole game into a parallel universe where everything is real. I just talked to an elf who had the whole history down pat."

Dean slowed, looking around uneasily. "We break the spell everything snaps back, right?"

"Yeah, I hope so."

* * *

Charlie woke, lifting her hand to her head as it gave a deep-seated throb behind her eyes. She sat up slowly, looking around.

The room, and she thought it was just one room, was rustic in a fairy-princess kind of way. She was sitting on a four-poster bed, fine, filmy draperies gathered at each corner, the mattress and pillows soft and yielding under her. The log walls had been chinked and smoothed, and the timber gleamed a warm, dark gold in the candlelight that shone steadily from several thick candles positioned around the room. She slid off the edge of the bed, and stood up, her gaze taking in the rich tapestries that hung on the walls, her feet sinking deep into soft furs that covered the floor.

She came around the end of the bed and stopped, staring at the still figure that stood a few feet from her. The deer skull covered the head completely, antlers stretching out to either side. The body was hidden beneath a long black robe.

"Uh …"

The skull and robe stretched out, distorting and bleeding into the air around them, and Charlie's eyes widened as they dissolved slowly in front of her. The air rippled, a shift of rainbow colours, brightening to an eye-searing brilliant white and slowly fading out.

Where the skull-robe had been, a tall, impossibly slender girl stood. Not a girl, Charlie thought, taking in the heart-shaped face, framed in a wild halo of silver-white hair, arctic-blue, almond-shaped eyes, fringed by long white lashes, a small, plumply full mouth, the lips the colour of aged burgundy.

"Don't be afraid."

"Afraid? Me? No, uh … no," Charlie stammered. "Why would I be?"

The girl smiled, one side of her mouth lifting a little higher than the other. "I can hear your heart, Charlene," she said. "I brought you here to help me, not to kill you."

"Oh …" Charlie felt her knees sag slightly and she felt behind her for the end of the bed. "What are you?"

The girl's brows rose sharply. "You don't know? Or you do know but you don't want to admit it yet?"

"All of the above?"

"I am Eolande, of the _Aes Sidhe_, the Old Ones," Eolande said, her bright eyes narrowing as she looked at Charlie. "I think you've heard of us."

"Yeah, well, no, not really," Charlie prevaricated. "I mean, how much stock can you put into a video game, really?"

"Video game?"

"Never mind," Charlie sighed. "You did all this?"

Eolande looked around and nodded. "A man called me, bound me. I must do as he commands."

"He commanded you to turn our game into a real fantasy world?" She frowned as she heard how that'd sounded. "You know what I mean."

"Yes." The faery shivered, her outline dissolving into a million shimmering motes and reforming again.

Charlie rubbed her eyes. "Why am I here again?"

"You said you wanted to be a hero," Eolande stepped closer to her. "I heard you."

"No, no, no. What I said was that in the game I could be a hero," Charlie corrected her tersely, looking away. "In real life, I'm not."

"Is there a difference?"

"What do you mean? Of course there's a difference!" Charlie said. "In the game no one dies."

"That's not very heroic, if there's no risk."

"Yeah, well." She looked back at the faery. "I'm what you might call risk-aversive."

"I don't think that's true," Eolande said. "I think you think you can't do it."

Charlie dragged in a deep breath. "Yeah, there's that too."

"Courage is not the absence of fear, Charlene," the faery said softly. "It is doing what you must in spite of being afraid."

* * *

"You gotta be kidding me?" Dean looked up at the castle walls, thirty feet high and thick stone, the top crenelated and reinforced around the length with machicolations and bossing.

"Welcome to Muindur," Sam said dryly, walking up to the gate. He drew his sword and rapped on the heavy, hard timbers with the pommel.

"Who goes there?"

"Uh, emissaries for the Queen," Sam called back, making a face at his brother. The gate opened slowly, two guards with drawn swords appearing from the dimness of the tunnel between the outer wall and the curtain wall.

"Your business with the Queen?" The taller guard raised the point of his sword toward them.

"Her Majesty has been kidnapped by the Shadow orcs," Dean grated, his patience wearing thin. "Every soldier is needed to rescue her."

The guard's face paled and he turned abruptly, gesturing to the guard behind him. "Call the men."

"Think we'll have enough?" Sam muttered to his brother as they hurried through the tunnel to the bailey and into the castle.

"No idea," Dean said, staring around at the great hall they'd entered. "What's enough against a faery?"

"Armoury'll be through there," Sam pointed to the right at a curving hallway that followed the line of the wall.

The low-ceilinged room was the first door they came to and they pulled off their leather jerkins, finding the padded undershirts and hauberks piled on a long bench along the wall.

"God, this weighs a ton," Dean said, struggling to get the chain-mail shirt over his head. "How did people fight in this stuff?"

"You get used to it, I guess," Sam grunted, pulling his own over his head. He picked up a cuirass of boiled leather, thin sheet metal sewn between the layers, and buckled it on. "Better than ending up full of holes."

"Yeah," Dean agreed, looking along the rows of swords and shields and picking out the best he could find. "The road down to the forest and the, uh, Black Hills where the orcs are hiding out is a lot longer now."

Sam buckled the long belt around his hips, settling the scabbard back slightly so that it lay flat against his thigh. "How much longer?"

"Miles longer," Dean said, lifting the oval shield over his head and settling the broad leather strap against his chest. "That's why it took Bolty and me so long to get back."

"Think her Highness has horses here?"

"Better hope, we'll have an advantage if we get attacked again in the forest anyway."

"My lords, the men are ready." The guard stood at the doorway, and Dean and Sam followed him out of the castle and down into the courtyard. Twenty men stood beside their horses, their armour and weapons reflecting the bloody colours of the sunset.

"Your mounts," the guard said, gesturing to two horses that were being held by the gate. Dean looked at the heavily built bay gelding, hoping he remembered how to ride the damned thing. Sam's grey was a couple of hands taller, the horse's face and chest protected by curved plates of metal, buckled around the neck and girth.

"We having fun yet, Dean?" Sam said, putting his left foot in the stirrup and bouncing off his right, swinging his right leg over the saddle. He caught a glimpse of his brother's sardonic smile as Dean turned away.

"Yippee-ki-yay."

* * *

Boltar stared at the orc held in the stocks, aware that somewhere in the back of his mind, he was looking for zippers, for latex, for an indication that the creature in front of him wasn't real. The congealed yellow matter at the corners of the orc's eyes and the long, black tongue hanging from the open mouth certainly seemed real. He turned at the ringing clatter of shod hooves coming down the road.

Dean pulled up his horse next to him and dismounted. "You get the location of the king's hideout?"

He shook his head. "No, I failed."

Dean shrugged and walked over to the orc, drawing his sword and raising the tip until it was level with the orc's eye. "How 'bout it, ugly? Where's the king hiding out?"

The orc stared at him impassively, a string of saliva dripping from the tusks.

"We gonna do this the hard way?" He shifted the point slightly lower and flicked the tip across the creature's face, slicing through the thick skin, leaving a flap hanging from the cheek down to the jaw. The orc roared, straining against the iron-hard oak timbers that held it.

"The King does not have your Queen," it screamed at him, spraying spit across the front of his breastplate.

"That's not the right answer," Dean said, moving the tip of the sword to the other cheek as he watched the orc twisting desperately away.

"It's the truth." The orc froze as the sword touched its skin. "There is a power in the forest, not in the hills, in the deeps of the forest where the border meets the river, none of us could get close to it, even the elves whisper of it, it's the truth!"

"Dean, wait," Sam said. "I think that is the truth. The elf said it was a man, controlling the faery."

He looked at the orc. "Where in the forest?"

"By Hellenduir's Fall, a deep ravine and a stone building there that was never there before."

Dean looked at Boltar. "You know where he's talking about?"

"No." Boltar shook his head.

"I know Hellenduir's Falls, my lord," a soldier said, from the lines behind Sam. "My family lived on the edge of Shadowness Forest, I've been there."

"Just got yourself point, man," Dean said, sliding the sword back into the scabbard and getting onto his horse. "Bolty, you better stay here. I don't think combat's really your thing."

Boltar stepped back as Dean nudged his horse into a trot, the iron shoes on the horses hooves drawing sparks from the cobbles as the column of men rode past him.

"No, it is not," Boltar said softly, watching horses and riders increase their pace as they crossed the wide field in front of the forest. He turned and looked at the orc. "I'm afraid I'm going to need one of your teeth."

* * *

"How far are these falls?" Dean drew alongside the young soldier leading the way. "You gotta name?"

"Tomas, sir," Tomas said. He gestured across the forest to the south. "The falls are perhaps thirty miles, east of south."

_Thirty miles_, Dean thought. He didn't know what kind of time they were making on the horses, but it couldn't be too bad. He could do four miles an hour on foot, keeping to a steady run; he thought the horses might be making twenty or so.

"There is a part of forest, between where we are and the falls, that is very dangerous, sir," Tomas volunteered uneasily. "They say the Shadow King has no control over it, that the creatures that live there eat the souls of any who venture in."

"Awesome," Dean said, nodding and reining back slightly, letting the soldier go on ahead, waiting for Sam to catch up with.

"Apparently, we might have to fight our way through to get to this place," he said to his brother.

"You sound surprised," Sam said, looking at the moonlit forest around them.

"You don't," Dean retorted, looking at him. "How's that?"

"Well, a familiarity with the genre, for starter's, I guess." Sam shrugged. "We're on a quest to save a Queen from peril … did you think we'd get away with not having to fight our way through countless dangers to do it?"

Dean smiled sourly. "No breaks, not even in a fairy-tale?"

"Especially not in a faery-tale," Sam confirmed.

"Did your elf friend mention anything else living around here, aside from the orcs?"

"No, but I wasn't asking about the local fauna," he said. "Just keep our eyes open, I guess."

* * *

They'd dropped to a walk an hour later as the forest had closed in around them, the few thin shafts of moonlight the could penetrate the canopy providing too little light to go any faster. Dean had debated the pros and cons of lighting torches with himself for fifteen minutes before he finally decided that the dangers of attracting attention were outweighed by getting to the source of the problems in the quickest possible time.

Two of the men were leading them along the ever-narrowing path, their oil-soaked torches shedding enough flickering light around them to keep moving at a reasonable pace.

The prickle along the nerves at the back of his neck gave them a few seconds' warning of the attack.

"Sam! Close up! They're here!" he yelled, drawing his sword and dropping the reins, hauling his shield over his head as the distinctive whistle of arrows filled the air. The orcs erupted from the forest, barely visible in the near-darkness, the long arrows with their black feather fletching hitting the men and horses to the rear.

"Fire, more torches," Sam shouted, rolling off his horse and picking up one of the torches that had fallen from the dead guard's fingers and holding it up. Two of the Queen's guards grabbed branches from the side of the path and lit them from the torch, arrows punching into their shields as they spread the light.

Dean rode down a small grouping of orcs at the rear of the column, the creatures turning too late as the big bay thundered up to them, three crushed beneath the war-horse's hooves, his sword taking the heads of two others, and the long, sharp point at the top of his shield driving deeply into the skull of another. The men rallied at the sight, and the path was filled with the clash of metal on metal, screams of fury and pain, the stench of blood, bright-red and green-black, churned into the ground.

At the other end of the column, Sam fought on the ground, leading five of the Queen's men, their swords drinking deeply from the orcs that swarmed around them, greater skill making up for lesser numbers. The firelight turned the battle into a flickering miasma, where shadows through the light and smoke could be friend or foe, and the grunts and snarls and shrieks from the orcs drowned out the screams of the men who lay dying.

"Attack!" Dean's deep voice roared over the melee, Sam looking up to see his brother and a dozen of the mounted soldiers, heading for them at a full gallop, four tightly abreast, the horses shoulder to shoulder, filling the path completely.

"Hold!" he yelled at his men, and they backed together, shields up, forming a tight circle as the orcs splintered and scattered around them, many of them throwing down their weapons and racing back into the sheltering darkness of the forest.

The horsemen pulled up next to the group and Dean dropped to the ground, looking first at his brother. "You alright?"

"Yeah, a few scratches, nothing serious," Sam said, lowering his shield and sheathing his sword. "How many did we lose?"

"Not sure," Dean answered, handing his horse to one of the soldiers and walking back along the path, checking each of the men who lay on the ground. Eight had died, four more were injured too badly to continue. He looked back at Sam and shook his head, reaching out to close the staring eyes of Tomas.

"A pyre?" Sam looked at the men. "It would keep them safer than trying to make it back through the night."

Dean nodded, turning to one of the men. "Mikel, choose four men to stay here, protect the injured, burn the dead."

The soldier nodded, and turned away as Dean and Sam mounted again, leading the four remaining soldiers away. Tomas had told him that the path they were on would take them straight to the falls. It would get narrower as the land rose into the hills, but it would still be obvious.

His watch had disappeared at the same time as his gun, and he had no idea of the time. The moon was low in the western sky, the light slanting through the forest, not much but enough for the horses to find their way in the darkness.

"_I never wanted you to be a soldier, to go to war, to see men die under your command," his father had said, one long ago evening when they'd been on their own in a little town on the edge of nowhere, cleaning the guns by the light of a kerosene lantern. "It kills something inside, to watch those deaths, waiting for your own. But at the same time, I couldn't've trusted anyone else with their lives, couldn't believe that anyone else would look after them the same way I could."_

He hadn't really understood what his father had been trying to tell him that night, although his imagination had furnished the images around the words, and let him see the pain that had lived, mostly buried, sometimes not, inside the man. He understood it now. They'd followed him unquestioningly, not because they knew him or had loyalty to him but, he thought, because he'd gone in ahead of them.

_You can't lead an army from the rear_. And there was no part of him that could stand aside and send anyone in to do a job that he could do himself. He remembered the burning feeling of shame he'd felt, watching Charlie enter Roman's building through the monitors, from the safety of the anonymous van outside. He couldn't have done what she could do, but that hadn't changed the feeling. And again, they'd involved her in a situation where she could get hurt, or killed.

"We should have sent her away," Dean said softly, turning his head to look at Sam.

"She didn't want to go," Sam pointed out. "People make their own choices, Dean. You've got to learn to let them do that. You can't be responsible for what other people choose to do, can't take responsibility for everything that happens."

He glanced back down the trail. "Whoever's controlling this faery, they chose to work the spell that brought it here. They chose to give the commands that killed those men and created this situation. That's not on you."

In the darkness he heard his brother's deep exhale and frowned. "I chose all the things that happened in my life. You were right about that. I chose to trust Ruby. Chose to drink the demon blood. Chose her over you, thinking that I was stronger than you were," he said quietly. "Those choices brought on the end of the world. And I know what they did to you. And there's nothing I can do to make that right, to fix it. Except try and figure out who I became when I made them." He sighed. "And how to get back to who I was before."

Dean sat still in the saddle, listening to the pain in his brother's voice. He didn't know what to say to Sam. Didn't know if there was anything he could say that could help Sam with what he needed to do for himself. He wanted to tell him that it was okay, that he understood – it wasn't a lie, he did understand what had driven those choices, for the most part. But he didn't say it. He'd spent his life trying to make things right for Sam and it had never worked out. It was time for Sam to make it right for himself, or not.

_Like Benny_, he thought wearily. _Like Cas_.

Sam looked over at his brother, seeing his profile dimly in the faint reflected light filtering through the trees above them. He felt the silence between them, a silence that told him that for the first time, Dean wasn't going to tell him it was okay, that it would be okay. A silence that told him that his brother was leaving it up to him to get this right.

* * *

"So this is actually Muindur?" Charlie looked at the faery in confusion. "In our time or is it a separate, parallel universe or what?"

Eolande smiled slightly. "It is itself. All worlds lie close together from time to time. Close enough to step to with a little magic."

"That tells me a lot," the programmer said with a sniff. "Is it real?"

"As real as you are," Eolande confirmed.

"And when you remove the spell, what happens then?"

"Everything will return to what it once was."

"The people you killed? The people who've been killed since you changed it?" Charlie pressed. Had the orcs that Dean had fought been people in her world? Were they dead now?

"Sssh!" The faery stood abruptly, and vanished. Charlie shifted back slightly on the bed, her heart thumping as the iron latch to the door lifted.

"My Queen," Boltar said as he came into the room, closing the door behind him and strolling to the fire. "I see you're resting comfortably."

"Boltar, what are you –" she stopped, closing her mouth as the pieces dropped into place in her mind.

"You're the mage who summoned the faery?" Charlie couldn't keep the disbelief out of her voice and Boltar's face darkened at the implication.

"You constantly underestimate me," he said angrily, walking to her. "Why? Why is that?"

"Hey, don't take it personally," she said, wriggling backwards across the bed. "You just – didn't seem the type."

"The type? The type?" He stood in front of her, hands clenched into fists. "What? Like your 'bodyguard' or his friend, the giant? I've got more brains than the two of them together, adding half of the other players in this game."

"Of course, you have," Charlie said soothingly, looking around for a weapon. The room was unsurprisingly lacking in them.

"If you'd just seen what I could've offered you, none of this would've happened," he said, walking toward the bed. "A Queen needs a King, a strong and wise King."

Charlie rolled off the other side, brows raised. "Are you kidding me?"

"Eolande!"

The faery appeared beside him. "Make her see that I am the right man for her."

"I can't do that," the faery said acerbically. "I told you."

Boltar turned to look at the faery. "Do as I command!"

"I can't create love, no one can," Eolande looked at him expressionlessly. "Magic can't touch love."

* * *

The roar of the waterfall gave them warning that they were close and they pulled up, leaving the horses tied along the path and following it down toward the river on foot, single file. The building the orc had told them of was little more than a single room cottage, Sam thought as he saw the faint lights from the windows, leaking out around the coverings.

Dean felt the prickle on his neck again. "Dammit."

"What?" Sam looked at him. He gestured to the forest around them.

"More uninvited guests." He chewed the corner of his lip for a moment. "We'll have to go full throttle. You and me to get Charlie, and try and find the spell book, these guys keeping the orcs off us until we can break the spell."

"Sounds like a plan." Sam nodded, as Dean turned to the soldiers behind them.

They raced down the hill, hearing the rustlings and grunts in the trees and undergrowth of the forest around them. Dean hit the door with his shoulder at full speed and the timbers splintered around the latch, the door flying open, he and Sam falling through into the room as first of the orcs hit the edge of the clearing.

"Sam! Dean!" Charlie yelled as they stopped. "It's Boltar!"

Eolande disappeared as soon as the door flew open, but Dean could see her, crouching beside the ornate chest of drawers behind Boltar.

"And faery," he said, looking back at Jerry. "Well, now what, Jerry?"

Jerry stared at him. "My name is Boltar, the Furious!"

He dragged in a deep breath. "My plan was to win the battle tomorrow, having rid myself of all my competition, convincing the Queen that I should be her King. But then you two idiots showed up and I was forced to improvise." He looked away. "Rescue the damsel in distress from orcs, become King, kill you both." He looked at them with a humourless smile. "That'll work too."

"So why'd you go from hobbling to murder?" Sam asked. Boltar shook his head.

"Because I could," he said shortly. "What do you care?"

"What is your problem?" Charlie stepped out from behind the bed. "Why would you hurt people? This is just a game."

"THERE IS NO GAME!" Jerry screamed at her furiously. "There is only Moondoor. I came here to be different, to get away from my crappy life! To be a hero! And guess what?!"

"What? You were a loser in the real world and you're a loser here?" Dean smirked at him. "Shocker."

He drew his sword from its scabbard, looking at Sam. "Eolande, hold him."

Dean saw the faery look at Sam, and his brother was encased in ice. Jerry swung the sword up and Dean pulled his from the scabbard on his belt, feeling the weight and balance in his wrists, stepping away from the wall as the lighter man approached.

The first engagement of blade on blade told him everything he needed to know. Jerry'd been having lessons in swordplay, maybe for a couple of years. He'd developed enough muscle and control in his forearms and shoulders to handle the heavy two-handed sword, but not enough to defeat a more skilled opponent. Which he didn't think the man facing him was. Not enough to understand weight and balance in the fighter, not just the sword. Not enough to move fast, in any direction, to be able to anticipate his opponent, or out-think them. Dean backed, giving Jerry more time to feel confident, watching the emotions in his face, then he drove forward.

Jerry stumbled backward at the weight and power of the sideways cut, his certainty that Dean wouldn't be able to fight as well with a sword shattered. He blocked the backswing weakly, the flat of the hunter's broadsword hitting him above the ear, making his head ring, and he only just parried the thrust that followed, sweeping the blade aside, his arms aching from the weight of the sword and the weight of the blows. The next cut was low and he jumped, staggering as he landed against the bedpost behind him, not realising it was there. Another cut rang through his blade, the vibrations numbing his wrist to the elbow and he turned away, rolling across the floor to get some distance.

"Eolande, stop him!" Jerry yelled as he rolled to his feet, the sword's point dragging on the floor.

"No!" Charlie dove across the floor between them, her hands outstretched for the book that had fallen from Jerry's pouch. She felt the cover under her fingers and turned the dive into a sideways roll, her arm arching up and the book flying smoothly in a gentle curve into the fire.

Jerry, Eolande and Dean stopped, turning to watch the flames licking at the cover. The book caught all at once, flaring high up the chimney in a twisting vortex of white fire.

"NO!" Jerry shrieked, lurching across the floor. Dean used the flat of the sword to sweep his legs out from under him as Eolande straightened up and spread her arms wide.

* * *

_**Moondoor**_

The ice encasing Sam vanished. The air thinned and wavered, the scents of the world of Muindur disappearing, leaving the very faintly tainted air of Farmington Hills in its place. Dean looked at the long wooden sword in his hand, feeling the weight of the mail and armour disappear, his clothing changing back to the costume that Charlie'd insisted he wear. Around them the room and the cottage faded, showing the white canvas walls of a small tent, extremely crowded with five of them inside of it.

The faery opened her eyes and looked at Dean for a long moment. "You are still hunted, you should know that."

He nodded, turning away to reach a hand out to Sam and haul him to his feet. Eolande looked at Charlie.

"You were very heroic," she said, her smile not quite reaching the arctic-blue eyes. "Do you believe you can be, now?"

Charlie shook her head, looking at the brothers who were lifting Jerry to his feet. "Not really. I have my moments, but I know what it looks like, when it's all the time and real."

Eolande followed her gaze and shrugged. "Some people have no choice in the matter." She turned back to the woman. "You broke my bonds and I am indebted to you," she said softly. "Choose your heart's desire, that I may clear the debt between us."

Charlie's eyes widened as she registered the faery's meaning. "A wish? Really?"

"Really," Eolande smiled. "Whatever you want."

Charlie glanced at Dean and Sam, both men watching her and leaned closer to Eolande. She whispered in the faery's ear.

"As you wish," Eolande said. And vanished.

Sam looked around the cramped interior. "She really gone now?"

Dean nodded. "Yep."

* * *

The tent was just a half an hour walk back to the camp site of Moondoor. Jerry stumbled and moaned the entire way. Charlie opened the stocks and freed Monty, and Dean forced Jerry into them with only a little unnecessary force as Charlie slid the pins into the locks.

"Couple of weeks?" He turned to look at Charlie with a lifted brow. She looked at Jerry coolly.

"Or months."

They turned away and headed back for the royal tent. "I can't believe I missed out on the castle," she said sadly, looking at the small tent as they got near it. "Was it really, really cool?"

Sam snorted. "Yeah, it was amazing."

"Totally awesome," Dean agreed.

"Damn." She stopped walking and looked at them. "I don't suppose you two would like to give an old friend a hand with the upcoming battle, by any chance?"

Dean looked at the ground and Sam looked away, neither saying anything.

"Okay, say no more." She nodded and kept walking. The brothers followed her, catching up after a moment.

"So, what's next for you, Charlie?" Sam stopped in front of the tent. "New town? New identity?"

"If the last twenty-four hours have taught me anything, it's that escaping isn't what it used to be," she said, looking around them at the people moving around the Moondoor site. "No more replacement characters for me. I gotta face reality from now on. Sadly, reality actually includes monsters, but what are you gonna do?"

She looked at Dean. "If you guys need my help anytime, let me know."

"Will do," Dean said, glancing at Sam. "Take care of yourself, Charlie."

She nodded, and went into the tent. Dean looked around for a moment then turned and looked at his brother.

"So, uh, what's next?" he asked Sam. "'Cause, no fun, right?"

Sam's mouth lifted at one side.

"Look, before you say anything, I get it," he said. "No amount of fun is going to help you get over what you gave up."

"Oh, I don't know," Sam said consideringly. "This job was pretty fun. I had a good laugh seeing you in that hinky costume."

"Yeah, that's hilarious," Dean said, brows drawing together. "What are you saying, Sammy?"

Sam pulled in a deep breath, looking away. "What I gave up, Dean, I did for me. Not for you. Not for the job or the world. Just for me."

"Huh." Dean found something interesting on the ground to stare at.

"I'm feeling kind of bad on bailing on Charlie in her hour of need," Sam added, tilting his head to look at Dean's face.

"Yeah," Dean said, mouth quirking up on one side. "Me too."

* * *

Dawn lit the eastern sky in streaks of pale gold and blushing rose, outlining the streamers of thin cloud that trailed to the west and gilding the mists that rose from the river and the damp soil to wreathe the wide, open ground between the two armies.

The field was not totally silent. The jingle of buckles and rasp of metal over leather, the thunk of heavy weapons dropped onto the moist sod, the sighs and harshly drawn breaths of the men and women lined there eddied quietly back and forth.

Dean drew in a deep breath, his voice dropping a half a register as he walked along the ranks, his sword in his hand, his shield held over one arm, his face drawn with passion.

"My brothers, I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me," he turned at the end of the row, looking back at them. "A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day."

"Is that –?" Charlie looked up at Sam quizzically. Sam grinned at her, nodding.

"An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"

The Queen's army stood, rattling their swords against their shields and shouting at the tops of their voices. And Sam laughed as he ran stride for stride with his brother, sword raised and shield held over shoulder and heart, toward the army that was barrelling across the mist-covered grass straight at them.

The two armies clashed, men going down as body hit body and shield clanged against shield. Black and red and blue and green balls flew through the air over the heads of the combatants, leaving soft puffs of coloured chalk on their victims' faces, hair and clothes as the mages wielded their magic from the sidelines. Dean worked his way across the ranks of the orcs, the heavy clunk of his sword easily audible over the noise of the melee, while Sam had turned the other way and was decimating the ranks of elf and warrior like a berserker, standing a head taller than most of his opponents.

The sun had risen perhaps a hand's breadth over the horizon when the brothers dropped to their knees, leaning against the hilts of their upright swords, surrounded by the dead.

A trumpet sounded and they looked up wearily, getting to their feet as a representative from each of the four kingdoms knelt in front of the Queen of Moons.

* * *

"How'd you find this place?" Dean looked around appreciatively, his hand curled around a pint of ale, drawn from the tap. Two empties sat on the table not far from his elbow.

The room was long and low-ceilinged, chunky, varnished timber tables and benches filling most of the centre of the floor, a short bar running along the wall it shared in common with the more modern-looking bar in the next room. A wide hearth in the middle of the exterior wall was filled with a cheerful fire, spilling the scents of burning applewood and pine, and the lighting came from sconces along the walls, the tables lit with candles in glass shields.

"You like?" Charlie asked, looking around contentedly.

"It's awesome," he said, gulping down a few mouthfuls of the beer.

"The owner's been coming along to Moondoor, thinking about setting up a portable brewery there and she let us take over this room. We plastered the walls, built the tables and the bar, and provide our own live music."

On cue, the musicians stepped onto the low, wooden platform at the other end of the room with fiddles and harp, flutes and guitars and bodhran, the first lilting notes of an old folksong lifting above the droning murmur of the voices.

He turned back to Charlie. "So, that faery gave you a wish?"

She nodded, smiling. He tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing.

"What'd you wish for?"

"I can't tell you that, it'd break the wish," she said, looking around. Dean studied her, unable to imagine what she could want that she didn't already have, pretty much.

"Come on, you can tell me," he coaxed, feeling a hundred percent relaxed by the action of the battle, the easing of the tensions between him and his brother, the atmosphere in the cheerful room, the three pints sloshing around his stomach … everything felt pretty much okay.

Charlie looked at him for a moment, then leaned closer, her chin resting on one hand. "I wished for someone to love."

Dean blinked. Hadn't thought of that. "I thought the faery said she couldn't mess with love?"

"I didn't wish for someone to fall in love with me," she corrected him dryly. "I wished for someone that I could love."

He wasn't sure he saw the distinction. "Well, yeah. Sure."

"You know how I said I wanted to be a hero?" she asked him. He remembered the conversation.

"Yeah. Why?"

"I realised that I don't. I mean, not the way you guys are," she amended. Dean frowned.

"Charlie, we're not heroes. We just do our job, that's it."

"That's kind of what makes you heroes, you know?" She smiled gently at him.

"No, it's not."

"You get paid for this gig, Dean?" Charlie asked, deciding to change tactics.

He looked at her narrowly. "No."

"Not exactly a job, then is it?" she said, waving a hand vaguely. "Not like you're making a living from it, or getting anything out of it for yourselves."

"Doesn't change a thing," he muttered, looking away.

Sam set another pint down next to his brother and sat down on the other side of the table. "What?"

"Would your Highness care to join me in a gamble?"

The three of them looked around at the soft voice, heavy with the burr of an Irish accent. Standing next to Charlie's chair, a young woman, dressed in a simple dark gown, with a long fall of strawberry blonde curls and sky-blue eyes, smiled at the Queen.

"Definitely," Charlie said, getting to her feet and taking her hand. She glanced over her shoulder at them.

"Don't wait up."

Sam lifted a brow at Dean as they watched the pair thread their way through the crowd. "What was that all about?"

Dean shrugged. "No idea."

"You want to head back to Missouri tomorrow?"

"If nothing else comes up in the meantime," Dean agreed readily. "Why do you think Kevin's having trouble with the piece we've got?"

"Failsafe," Sam said, frowning. "When the leviathan tablet broke, he only had to touch the pieces for it to rejoin. I think that when the tablet breaks, it's just unreadable for anyone, even the prophet."

"So we need to find the other piece, pronto."

"Yep." Sam tipped up the glass mug and swallowed down the rest of the beer. "But not tonight."


	24. Chapter 24 Litteris Hominae

**Chapter 24 Litteris Hominae**

* * *

_**I-55 S, Illinois**_

Dean flicked another glance over at his brother. It'd been two hours since Sam had said anything, or done anything other than stare blankly out the window as the scenery rolled past.

"You alright?" he was finally driven to ask. Sam blinked and looked around at him.

"Yeah, I'm okay," he said, brow wrinkling up slightly. "Why?"

"You know, no talking, no movement, not sure if you're alive or dead – the usual reasons," Dean said, an edge to his voice, his grip on the wheel.

The corner of his brother's mouth lifted slightly. "Just thinking about stuff."

"What stuff?"

"Stuff," Sam said evasively. Demon stuff, personal stuff, Crowley stuff, angel stuff … most of it had tracked through his head in the last two hours. "When do we get to Warsaw?"

"Three or four more hours," Dean said, flicking another glance over. "You know, if you don't want to talk about it …"

"I don't want to talk about it," Sam agreed. "Not yet."

"Fine."

"Good."

Sam turned back to the window and Dean felt his fingers tightening slightly around the wheel again.

He didn't want to be his brother's keeper or guardian or whatever you wanted to call it anymore, he thought sourly. He had a job to do and he needed to be able to do it without having to think of anyone else. But at the same time he couldn't just turn that part off all that easily. It worried him that Sam wasn't talking about the revelations he'd come up with in Michigan. Worried him that his brother didn't want to talk about it.

Charlie's assertion floated back into his mind and an association rose with it. _"Your happiness for all those people's lives, no contest. Right? But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero?"_

He let out his breath slowly. It had been a long time since he'd thought of himself like that, as a hero for what he spent his life doing. He remembered telling Sam that Dad was a hero, that they were, back when all Sam wanted was to be able to go to school and make friends and not lie to everyone.

When had that changed? When they'd started losing everyone around them? When he'd realised that being a hero was about on par with being a street-cleaner – minus paycheck and medical benefits and a crappy pension? They'd cleaned up a lot of messes but they weren't even going to get a pension out of it, because it would never be over and sooner or later, one of them, or both of them, would die, unnoticed by the world, alone, unsung heroes with no grave markers to show that they'd been there.

He'd looked it up once, the definition of a hero, in some library in some town in some state that he couldn't remember now. The definition had stayed with him. _Hero - a man distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility and fortitude._

Courage. Nobility. Fortitude. A lot of words that meant nothing in the real world where a man would kill an old woman for the buck and change in her purse, where a woman drowned her kids in the family car because the new boyfriend didn't like them, where a child would beat another child to death because there was nothing good on TV. Where were the heroes who should've prevented those deaths?

He rubbed his hand over his jaw, eyes narrowed as the oncoming headlights on the other side of the wide road spilled into them for a fleeting second and were gone, leaving only a bright after-image of brilliant eyes floating against the back of his eyelids.

His father's voice spoke patiently to him. _"There are cops and firemen and social workers and doctors for a lot of the bad stuff that happens to good people, Dean. But there's no one but hunters to take care of the monsters and evil that people don't see, ninety percent of the time. Hunters like us. When a person has the ability to do something about evil, they also have the responsibility to take on that job."_

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

"Amigos! Long time no see, _mi casa es su casa_," Garth said with a cheerful grin as they walked up to the gangway. He leaned the mop he held against the cabin-side and gestured expansively for them to come on board.

Dean sighed and walked up the wooden and steel stairs to the broad timber gangplank that spanned the gap between the concrete jetty and the high deck of Garth's converted commercial fishing boat, hearing Sam's boots clumping up behind him.

"Garth, hey, Kevin around?" he asked as he stepped onto the wet deck, feeling his soles slide a little.

"Yeah, he's still at it," Garth said, nodding to the door further along. "Poor kid looks like hell but he's got grit."

"Any good news at the end of the tunnel?"

"Not so far." Garth shook his head. "Mama Tran was calling daily but that was just bumming him out even more so he stopped it."

Sam raised a brow. "How'd he do that?"

"Changed phones," Garth said with a shrug.

Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam. "Perfect, so we've got the wrong number now as well."

"I'm sure he'll give you guys the new one," Garth murmured reassuringly. "Just go straight down, I've still got some swabbing to do."

In the cabin at the bottom of the steep companionway stairs, Kevin was sitting in the same position as Dean had last seen him, the table in front of him piled with papers and notes and books and scratchings, the half of the Demon tablet acting as a paperweight for a few of them.

"Garth, I said I didn't want to be disturbed!" he said without turning around.

"Well, we won't disturb you for long," Dean said, walking up to the table. "Just checking in."

Kevin looked up at him, glancing back to Sam, his expression twisting up into a bitter grimace.

"I would've called if I had any news," he said angrily. "How can I figure this out when it's been one interruption after another!"

"Dude, we haven't been here for weeks," Dean said defensively.

"You were here yesterday!"

"No, Kevin, not for a month," Sam said soothingly. "With Cas."

Kevin looked at him for a moment, and then down at his watch. "Goddamn it!"

"Hey, time flies, right?" Dean leaned back against the filing cabinet. "What's the word?"

Kevin got up, straightening his back wearily as he walked to the counter and looked at the empty pot of coffee, his shoulders slumping.

Sam glanced at his brother, and walked to the counter. "I'll make you a fresh pot," he said hurriedly, taking the empty jug and filling it at the sink.

"Sam thinks that you're not going to have any luck because the tablet can't be read while it's broken," Dean said as Kevin dropped into his chair.

"What?" Kevin looked back at Sam. "You think I would've wasted months of my time and driven myself almost blind and crazy if I hadn't made any progress at all?"

Sam looked at back, shrugging as he spooned coffee into the filter. "Well, you didn't seem to be getting anywhere …"

"God!" Kevin hunched over the table. "I can see a lot of it, but it's – you ever tried to read really small print when you're drunk?"

Dean snorted. "Yeah, all the time."

"Well, it's like that," Kevin said sourly. "You think you're getting words or bits of words but they're unfocussed and fuzzy and sometimes they seem to disappear entirely. But I think I've got a key to it now."

"You have?"

"Yeah, for some reason, the tireder I get, the better I do."

Dean glanced at Sam. "Well, you should be flying through it 'cos you look like shit."

"No, I don't mean – gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a nap tired – I'm talking about verging on sensory deprivation tired," Kevin said irritably. "And I'm not quite there yet, but I need – I desperately need to have the time with no interruptions, no one around."

"Like a monk sitting on a mountain-top?" Sam asked, brow wrinkling up.

"Exactly." Kevin nodded. "So both of you – get out and let me do my job."

Sam turned on the pot and nodded, looking at Dean. "Right, we're going."

"We are?"

"Yeah, we are."

* * *

_**Hays, Kansas**_

The Impala pulled into the motel parking lot and drove up to the office, Sam getting out and getting the room while Dean drummed his fingers against the wheel impatiently.

"Seventeen, across the other side," Sam said as he got back into the car. The engine rumbled, the noise echoing back from the building's walls as Dean found the slot and nosed into it.

The room was, well, mostly orange, and Dean's nose wrinkled slightly as he looked around. He should have been completely oblivious to their ever-changing surroundings by now, but he still found that the primaries and geometric patterns that had been the gift of the decade of his birth had the power to pull his attention, no matter how tired he was or how indifferent to décor in general.

"You buy Kevin's speech about needing the mountain-top or whatever to get the tablet figured out?" he asked his brother, dropping his duffle and the gear bag at the foot of his bed and pulling off his jacket.

"Yeah, actually." Sam shrugged as he closed the door and locked it, turning around to see Dean heading for the bathroom. "It's kind of well-known, needing no distractions for the mind to concentrate completely on difficult problems."

"Lucky for us, we can still think when there're monsters attacking us and all manner of unholy crap flying around, huh?" Dean grinned, and shut the door.

Sam dropped his bag on the floor and pulled the laptop from its satchel, setting it on the formica table top. Garth had given them a job in Colorado, regular haunting he thought, but the file of clippings was thin and he wasn't convinced there was a haunting in the little town of Appleside.

He could hear the shower running through the thin walls. Dean had been more relaxed and cheerful in Michigan than he'd seen him for a while, seeming to have let go of the tightly held control he'd been holding. It wasn't surprising, exactly, Sam thought. Just unexpected.

Watching his brother worrying about Charlie, putting her safety above the hunt, he'd had a hard time reconciling those actions with the man who'd been willing to kill a civilian in order to kill Crowley, who'd gotten him out of the way to protect a vampire. It seemed as if the hard edges that had defined his brother when he'd gotten out of Purgatory were being ground away.

Or maybe he'd really changed. He remembered the argument over using the kid as bait for the shtriga. And Dean's decision to use Jo to draw in H.H. Holmes in the abandoned sewer in Philadelphia. Even killing Amy, because she was a monster and he couldn't've lived with himself if he'd let her go and she'd killed again. Those were all his brother's decisions – to put the hunt, the need to get the evil thing, above the people they were supposed to be protecting.

Now … now, he didn't know if that hardness was still a part of Dean.

* * *

Motel coffee sucked, Dean thought, staring at the cup of bitter liquid he'd been attempting to drink. He needed real coffee. A lot of it. Fast.

"Come on, Sam, let's get out of here," he said, grabbing his boots from beside the bed and sitting in the chair to pull them on. "Daylight's wasting."

Sam rinsed his mouth out and put his toothbrush back in the small travel bag on the counter. He hadn't tried the coffee, but he knew that it was responsible for Dean's impatience to leave, and for the edge he could hear in his voice.

On the other side of the room, the closet door flew open and a man fell out onto his hands and knees on the floor, staring up at them with wide eyes.

"Which of you is John Winchester?"

Dean stared at the man as Sam spun around. For a long moment, the three men were frozen in their positions in silence, then the man got to his feet, gesturing impatiently. Dean got to his feet and took a step closer.

"Please! Time is of the essence, which of you is John Winchester?" he repeated, looking from Dean to Sam.

The brothers exchanged a loaded glance.

"Neither," Sam said, studying him. Well-dressed – snappily dressed even, Sam thought – he spoke distinctly, as if used to orating, though the delivery was needlessly fussy and more than a little melodramatic.

The man frowned at him, his gaze cutting away. "That's impossible! That's absolutely …," he trailed off uncertainly, his finger touching the edge of his nostril as he felt the wetness there. "What did I do wrong?"

"Who the hell are you, mister?" Dean demanded, walking closer.

"Not now, I'm thinking," the man muttered dismissively, and that was about all the aggravation he could take this morning, Dean thought, striding forward, grabbing the man by the lapels and shoving him hard back against the wall, pinning the douche with one arm across his chest.

"Please, I can assure you there's no need for violence," the man looked down at the floor as Dean stared at him. "One of you must know John Winchester –"

"I'll tell you what," Sam said, walking up beside him. "When one of us falls out of your closet, then you can ask the questions!"

"Yes, my apologies," the man said quickly. He looked down at the arm pressed against his chest. "Is it absolutely essential that you keep your hands on me?" he asked Dean, looking up briefly.

_Not if I shoot you_. The thought flitted through Dean's mind and he released him, taking a step back. The man was annoying in every conceivable way, but the closet trick and the mention of his father's name had done the job. There was no way he was leaving until he'd spilled absolutely everything he knew.

"Thank you," the man said, pulling a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiping the blood that had pooled inside his nostril. He sniffed, and straightened his jacket, doing up the buttons again. "Gentleman, in the absence of any and all other reasonable explanations, I'm afraid this has been a tragic misunderstanding."

Neither Dean nor Sam moved, or showed any discernible reaction, bracketing the stranger between them, pinning him with the intense stares of carnivores in the wild. The man gestured to the door of the room. "I'll be on my way."

He managed a couple of strides before they flanked him, Sam moving in front of him easily. "That's not happening."

"There are matters I must attend that are of grave importance," the man said, his voice rising as he realised that he couldn't go through them or get past them. "I do not have time to deal with the likes of you!"

Dean pulled a pair of 'cuffs from the gear bag sitting on the table, as Sam corralled the man closer to him, grabbing an arm and forcing it toward his brother as Dean snapped the bracelet around his wrist.

"You're not going anywhere," he said quietly, yanking the other cuff down and through the back of the chair at the table. "Till we get some answers."

The man struggled against them for a moment, then twisted around, his hands moving fast and the dual clicks of the handcuffs sounding in the sudden quiet of the room. Dean looked down at his wrist disbelievingly as the man walked fast from the room.

"How'd he do that?" He looked past his brother, whose wrist was locked into the other 'cuff, the chain through the curving back. "Oh, you gotta be kidding me!"

The motel room door closed with a soft snick of the lock.

"Key!" Sam gestured to the bag and Dean's fingers searched along the bottom of the bag for the small ring of keys, finding it and pulling it out. He unlocked the 'cuffs and checked the mag on the Colt, striding across to the door and yanking it open.

He'd just made it to the sidewalk when he heard the glass smash, and saw the man getting into the Impala. Behind him, Sam reached out and clamped a hand around his forearm.

"Don't shoot him."

"Not yet," Dean said, crossing the parking lot and pointing the gun at the man's head as he leaned forward for the ignition wires. He cocked the gun, saw that the click had gotten the man's attention.

"Nice taste in wheels."

The man let go of the wires, sitting upright and looking up at him. "Yours, I presume?"

Sam opened the passenger door.

"Out," Dean said coldly, stepping back from the door. "And back to the room, if you don't mind."

"Oh," the man said, opening the door and sliding out. "Courtesy, now?"

"It comes and goes," Dean allowed, lowering the gun to his hip and stepping behind him. "But it's really not a good day to push my patience."

The man walked back into the room, and Dean held the gun on him as he unwillingly sat down in the chair, leaning back against the table to watch him. Sam glanced at his brother and Dean nodded.

The silver knife had no effect and the blood that flowed from the small cut was red. Salt and iron similarly produced no reactions and Sam pulled out the flask, tossing the contents over the man.

"And there with the holy water," the man said, laughing sourly.

Sam looked down at him. "He's clean."

"I could have told you that," the man said prissily, pulling his coat sleeve down over the cut.

Dean straightened up, walking over to him. "Yeah, well you can tell us everything, before I beat it out of you."

The man looked up at him. "I'm quite certain this all beyond your understanding, my friend." He looked down at the gun in Dean's hand disdainfully. "And violence will not help you comprehend these matters with any greater ease."

The dripping patronisation in the man's voice, the unconcealed sneer on his face, the certainty in his eyes that nothing was going to happen unravelled what little remained of Dean's fragile control.

"Let me tell you what I understand." He lunged forward and grabbed him by the coat, the gun barrel rising to his face, finger on the trigger. "Some asshat pops out of my closet asking about my Dad, smashes up my ride – so why am I not getting violent again?"

"Dean." Sam said quietly.

The man looked at Dean disbelievingly. "John Winchester is your father?"

The superior tone had vanished, along with the sneer, and Dean's fingers loosened a little on the man's coat. Then the room began to shake, and Dean stepped back, looking at Sam. The stranger got to his feet, moving away from the chair and turning slowly to look at the closet.

"Oh my god …" he murmured, his eyes widening as he stared at the door.

"What?" Dean snapped, feeling the building bouncing under his feet, seeing the walls tremble violently.

"Run!" The man ordered them vehemently, his gaze locked onto the closet door. It flew open, filled with a blinding light, and the indistinct outline of a woman stepped through, gaining detail as she entered the room. Auburn hair piled on her head in a smooth roll, a dove-grey silk cocktail dress, spattered in blood, bright red lipstick outlining a full, wide mouth. The light disappeared abruptly and she walked into the room, heels clicking on the floor.

Dean stared at her, feeling as if the day was actually becoming a little more surreal than even he was used to. She looked like a pin-up girl for WWII posters, the wide, cat-like green eyes extended out to the edges of her cheekbones with long, fake lashes, a pearl choker matching simple pearl studs in her ears.

"Henry!" She looked at him, laughing throatily at his expression. "Silly man, you forgot to lock the door."

Taking a long look to either side at the brothers, she turned back to Henry, the humour disappearing from her expression. "Why don't you be a doll and give me what I want and I promise to kill you and your friends here quickly?"

Henry shook his head. "You know I can't do that."

She tilted her head slightly, her voice softening. "You're not a fighter, Henry."

Dean lifted the gun and she raised her arm, flicking the wrist with the emotional detachment of a woman flicking a fly. He felt himself lifted and flung backward across the room and into the wall, hitting it with the back of his shoulders, the force winding him and cracking the plaster as he fell to the floor. She made the same languid move to her right, and Sam was thrown into the opposite wall as she kept her gaze on Henry.

He looked at Sam, half-turning as if to go to him then abruptly stepping the other way, and her hand rose toward him, holding him in place, her lips parting as she tightened her grip around him. Against the wall, Dean watched the woman controlling Henry. Preoccupied, he thought, pulling the knife from his jacket and easing himself silently to his knees. He was probably just within her peripheral vision, he thought, able to see the curve of her cheekbone, so he moved very slowly.

Henry looked at her, reaching out to what he knew lay somewhere inside the woman's body, behind the hold of the demon. "Josie, I know you're still in there. You must fight this!"

The woman laughed delightedly, her expression smoothing out. "I'm afraid Josie's indisposed, pet. It looks like it's just you and me."

Henry's eyes widened as he saw Dean move up behind her, one hand gripping a smooth bare shoulder, the other thrusting a knife through her ribcage and into her heart.

She lit up inside, gold and red light boiling and flickering as she dropped to her knees on the floor. Henry and Dean stared at her from behind and Sam from the other side of the room as she gasped and shrieked with the pulses of light, her eyes shut tightly, the light diminishing as the moments ticked by.

None of the men moved as the light disappeared from her flesh and she opened her eyes.

"Well, that is no way to treat a lady," she said softly.

As if the words had broken a spell, Dean, Henry and Sam raced for the door, skidding into the parking lot and diving into the car. Dean started the engine and reversed out of the slot, spinning the wheel and taking off as Sam's door swung shut.

* * *

"Pull over," Henry moaned through mostly closed lips in front seat. "Pull over!"

"Don't you heave in my car!" Dean flashed a sideways glance at Henry, pulling off onto a narrow road leading down to the river. He stopped at the bottom, and Henry wrenched the door open, one hand plastered over his mouth as he staggered to the grassed verge a few feet away. Doubled over, he retched helplessly onto the ground.

"This just gets better and better," Dean said, opening his door and getting out as Sam did the same.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked tentatively, as another liquid rush erupted from Henry's stomach and sprayed across the grass.

Henry leaned on one hand, the other reaching for his handkerchief. "I will be," he said weakly, wiping at his mouth and getting slowly to his feet. "I usually enjoy dangerous situations vicariously, through the remove of literature," he added, looking at Sam. "I'm not trained for field-work."

Sam glanced at his brother. Dean shook his head tiredly. "Yeah, well, if you're done blowing chunks, you want tell us who the hell Rita Hayworth back there was?"

"She _was_ Josie Sands," Henry said slowly, turning to look at him. "A very experienced hunter who was working with us. She was possessed by a demon."

Dean's mouth twisted sourly. "Yeah, we got that. That's all the info you got?"

Henry shook his head. "No. The demon calls itself Abaddon –"

"Abaddon was a place, a place of destruction, in the Hebrew texts," Sam interrupted him, brows drawing together. "Not a demon."

Henry nodded. "Not until Christian faith began to overtake the older religions. Abaddon became a personification of destruction – the Destroyer, the fallen angel who was given the key to the Bottomless Pit and released a plague of locusts upon the world to devour and desolate it."

Dean looked at him warily. "You brought a very high-level demon here? Now?"

"Unintentionally!" Henry snapped at him. "I was charged with the protection of – it doesn't matter."

"Where are you from?"

"Normal, Illinois. Circa 1958."

"Yeah, right," Dean scoffed, his derision fading as he saw Henry's expression. "Seriously?" He looked at his brother sourly. "Dudes time-travelling through motel-room closets? That's what we've come to?"

"We're wasting time," Henry said irritably. "I need to see John Winchester."

"I told you, that's not gonna happen," Dean said sharply, feeling a return of his own irritation.

"Why not?" Henry looked at him, his expression tightening.

"Because he's dead!" Dean snapped, annoyed. He watched Henry's eyes widen in shock.

"No." Henry turned away from them, his shoulders hunching slightly as he absorbed the information. "No."

Sam looked at Dean, one brow lifting.

"What's it to you?" Sam asked.

"Everything." Henry turned back to them, head bowed as he looked at the ground absently, his face pale with shock. "I'm his father."

Dean heard the words but he couldn't connect them, not this man to his father, not this glimpse into a past he'd never ever heard about. He heard Sam's harshly indrawn breath and turned to look at his brother, Sam's eyes wide, his mouth parted as he stared back.

_Pull your shit together_, Dean told himself. _Just because the guy says he is, doesn't make him so_.

"We're going to need a bit more than just your say-so," he grated. Henry looked up at him and nodded.

"I have proof, but we need to get away from here, away from the demon and her means of tracking us."

* * *

_**US-54 E, Kansas**_

"Alright, let's hear it," Dean said as the car hummed along the highway.

Henry leaned back against the seat. "My name is Henry James Winchester. I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1930. I was educated at Yale University. It was there that I discovered that my father, and my grandfather before him, had been members of the society. I was recruited, covertly at first, to become an initiate of _Litteris Hominae_."

Sam glanced across at Dean. "Men … of Letters?"

"Yes," Henry leaned forward in his seat. "The order has existed for nine hundred years, formed from an even older order. We are scholars, primarily, gathering information, studying it, understanding it. We are preceptors … observers … and ultimately chroniclers of the world beyond this world, a world of shadows and powers that have seeped into human consciousness only as mythology and legend."

"Fascinating," Dean said, glancing in the mirror at the man sitting behind him. "Where's your proof that you're John Winchester's father?"

Henry pulled out a photograph, a black and white portrait of himself, standing beside a young boy who held a baseball bat. He handed it to Sam. "That was John two months ago."

Sam turned the photograph over. The inscription on the back said: Henry and John 1958.

"John was born on April 22, 1954 in Lewis Memorial Hospital in Chicago. His mother and I moved to Normal two years after, when I became an initiate of the society. Unfortunately I do not carry his birth certificate around with me."

Dean looked at Sam obliquely and Sam gave a slight nod. Those were the details of their father's birth.

"And this … secret society of yours?" Dean prompted.

Henry shook his head. "I don't understand why you don't know about this? Didn't John train you?"

Sam smiled dryly. "Oh, he trained us, alright. But not in whatever you're talking about. We've never heard of this society – or you, for that matter."

Dean looked back at Henry. "Dad's father disappeared when he was four. He never spoke of him. We only found out because we were looking for relatives and saw the different name on the birth certificate. His stepfather was a mechanic, in Lawrence, Kansas. Edward Landis died with his wife, Dad's mom, in 1980 in a car crash."

"What?" Henry stared at him. "No, that's – that can't be."

"He was four when you left to come here, right?" Sam asked quietly. Henry looked at him, realisation of what that meant dawning in his eyes.

Dean heard him sink back against the seat. He remembered the two months he and Sam had spent trying to find their father's people. Ruby had told Sam that all of Mary Campbell's relatives had been murdered and they'd gone looking for anyone with a connection to John Winchester.

They'd found virtually nothing. John's birth certificate, registered in Illinois. The gravestone of his mother – their grandmother - and stepfather, in Stull Cemetery, before the county had moved to the new cemetery on the other side of Lawrence.

They'd found out that Maeve Landis had been married to a man named Henry Winchester, who'd vanished without a trace in 1958. At the time, neither had thought much of it. Sam had speculated that he'd died, but there was no record of a death certificate, missing person or anything else to suggest that. Dean wondered if that's why his father hadn't mentioned it. John had been gone, there were no more leads to follow and they'd both lost the heart for the search anyway. And they'd had other things to do by then.

Seemed pretty certain that Henry hadn't gone back and died, he thought, his fingers tightening around the wheel. He'd come forward through time and either stayed, or died, here.

* * *

_**Iola, Kansas**_

The fast-food place had a seating area, and Dean glanced over at Henry, sitting at a table by the window, staring at the photograph.

"What do you think?" he asked Sam, leaning against the counter.

"Dates are right, the little detail he's given us fits as well. His driver's licence, dated 1958, by the way, says he's Henry Winchester, from Normal, Illinois," Sam said, shrugging. "I believe him."

"So … what? He was into something, got the attention of some major-league hellspawn, jumped into a closet in '58 and brought it with him here, leaving his family on the way?"

"Looks like," Sam said, looking over his shoulder at the man. "Dean, he's our grandfather."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't crazy about the other one, Sammy," Dean said, looking up as the waitress approached.

"Here you go," she said, smiling as she slid their trays across to them. "Enjoy!"

"Thanks," Dean muttered, taking one and turning. Sam picked up the other one.

They carried the trays over to the table and set them down, sitting opposite Henry.

"How you doing?" Sam asked, looking at Henry.

"I'll be … fine," Henry said, looking up at him. With the light behind him, it was hard to see his eyes, but Sam thought they looked too bright. "After all, despite everything, I've just met my grandsons, haven't I?"

He looked at Sam and held out his hand. "Henry Winchester, it's a pleasure."

Sam took it. "Sam."

"Hello, Sam."

Henry held his hand out to Dean, holding it there for a moment as Dean picked up the third basket of food and slid it across the table to him.

"Dinner."

Looking at the basket in front of him, Henry lowered his hand.

"This is Dean," Sam said tersely.

"Right," Henry said.

"Well this has been touching," Dean said briskly, picking up his burger. "How bout we figure out how to clean up your mess, huh?"

He took a bite of the burger, ignoring both his brother's sideways glance and the feeling in his gut that he was letting his feelings get the better of him. The defensive anger on his father's behalf was still sitting heavily in his chest. He didn't know what impact losing his father had had on John Winchester. Maybe a lot. Maybe not. When he'd met John in '73 and then again in '78, his father had seemed … pretty happy with himself to tell the truth. And when the Yellow Eyed demon had taken Mary, John had been driven by far worse things, far greater fears and grief than an old loss.

"Abaddon. Also known as Amon. And the Destroyer. Early Christian writings mixed up the Fallen with the Arabic daemons and djinn, confusing Abaddon with the Adversary, the Angel of the Abyss. It took nearly two thousand of study to create a complete demonology," Henry said thoughtfully. He looked up to see his grandson's eyes glazing over. "Yes, of course. She must be stopped."

"How come she didn't die when I stabbed her with the knife?" Dean said, through a mouthful of burger.

"Because you cannot kill a demon with run-of-the-mill cutlery," he said shortly. "At the very least, for the lesser hierarchies, the knife must be the Kurdish blood metal –"

Dean rolled his eyes and eased the bone hilt of Ruby's knife from his jacket pocket.

"That would be this," he said sardonically.

Henry looked at the knife avidly. "Where did you get that?"

Pushing the knife back into the sheath, Dean stared at him blandly. "Demon gave it to me."

"Now, that portal or whatever it was you came through – is it still open?" Sam cut in, unwilling to see the conversation derailed again.

"I highly doubt it," Henry said, looking from Dean's jacket to Sam. "Why?"

"I'm just thinking, if we can't kill this demon –"

"– maybe we can shove her ass back through to wherever she came from," Dean finished Sam's thought, taking another bite. "How'd you do it?"

"It's a blood sigil. Blood leads to blood," Henry said. "Or the next closest blood kin."

Sam looked at him. "But why bring you here? To our time? You were travelling forward, why didn't the sigil take you to Dad, before he died?"

Henry looked away. "I don't know."

Dean swallowed his burger and looked at Sam. "That's a good point, Sammy. Did you specify what time you were coming to?"

"No," Henry admitted. "The sigil calls to the closest blood bond – but – I don't know why it brought me here, to this time when my son is already dead."

"Huh," Dean said, wiping his fingers on a serviette as he looked at Henry carefully. "So, you used a spell without really knowing how it worked?" He glanced at his brother. "That's what the demon said too, something about your spells, Henry?"

Henry scowled at the table. "I'm just an initiate. Not an adept. Most of what we learn is theoretical."

"Oh," Dean said, leaning back in the chair. "Theoretical."

"We need to go," Henry said abruptly, getting up. "I've done this mostly on luck but it can't last much longer. I need to find an Adept, or an Elder."

"No argument," Dean said. "But first, let's just all get on the same page. Then we can go look for your friends." He looked up at Henry. "Sit down. Eat. You'll need the fuel."

Sam shook his head. "Henry, what was the blood sigil spell? Can you open another doorway?"

"Uh … I can, but I don't see what good it will do – the blood sigil is tied to my blood. It will take the demon only where I go or to my relatives, none of whom would be happy to meet it."

"What about using a different blood source?" Dean asked.

"Like what?" Henry stared at him. "No matter whose blood we use, it will carry the demon to more people."

"Not necessarily," Sam said, looking at Dean. "There are definitely some blood sources that are stuck in the distant past and went no further."

Henry studied him. "An extinct species? Where would you find the blood?"

"The Smithsonian, for one." Sam said. Henry shook his head.

"Even if we could use another blood source, there is still the power required to open the portal and that is not transferable."

"What do you mean?"

"I would need … a week … at least for my soul to recover from the effort of opening the portal I came through," Henry explained. "And I can only use the power of my own soul, not another."

"You tapped into your soul to get here?" Sam leaned forward, brows rising. "I thought only angels could that."

"Angels do not have souls, Sam. They use the power of the billions of souls in Heaven for their strength. As do the Fallen use the power of the souls in Hell to become stronger on this plane. I am human, and I can use my own soul, and it is a powerful source of energy but not an infinite one. It needs to rest as well."

He looked at Sam's expression, and glanced to Dean. "You don't know really know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Dad trained us to be hunters, not whatever you are," Sam said.

Henry let out a disbelieving laugh. "You're not. Are you? Hunters? Well, hunters are ... hunters are just the muscle," he frowned as he looked at Sam. "You're supposed to – you're Legacies. Your father was supposed to –"

Sam looked away uncomfortably. "I don't think you –"

"Made it back there," Henry finished the sentence brusquely. "No, I believe you are right. But one of the others should have overseen John's training." He stopped, looking down at the table.

"Henry, I know you're still trying to protect this society or whatever it is, but enough is enough," Sam said, looking at him. "We're as involved in this as you are, and we need the truth."

"The truth?" Henry looked away. "There are as many truths as there witnesses to the events, Sam. That's one thing you should've learned from life itself by now."

"Tell us what happened then," Dean said, curbing his impatience with the man's mumbo-jumbo. "When you came through."

Henry looked at his hands, resting on the tabletop. "I was supposed to complete the initiation. That was why we had gathered. It's why I don't know anything other than the theoretical aspects of this work," he admitted reluctantly, looking at Dean. "The secrets should have been revealed and I was to have started on the foundations of the next level."

"Josie Sands was the hunter contact with our sect." He rubbed his hand over his forehead wearily. "She was an experienced hunter, from the correct bloodline and she was invited because we'd had a series of connecting premonitions indicating that something powerful was moving in the lower planes. The order is divided into individual sects, and each had only a few members. Legacies, we're called," he continued slowly. "It was to protect the order from being penetrated by those who seek the knowledge we have for their own gain, you see?"

Sam nodded encouragingly.

"We didn't know Josie had been … compromised … until she started killing. David passed me the key, told me to run. His eyes, they were filled with blood and more was pouring from his mouth, his nose, his ears. I made the blood sigil and I fled, but she was right, I didn't cover my tracks and she followed along the open path I'd left."

"So Abaddon wants this key?" Dean cut the story down the bare bones. "For what?"

"I don't know."

"What does it do?" Sam asked.

"I don't know."

"Let me get this straight. You travelled through time to protect something that does you-don't-know-what from a demon that you know nothing about?"

Henry's mouth compressed. Dean looked at him, then flicked a glance at his brother. "Good."

Sam ignored the look, turning to Henry. "But you still have it? The key?"

"Yes," Henry said, nodding. "And the demon will stop at nothing to get it from me."

"Alrighty then," Dean said. "You're right, we need some help from someone who actually knows something."

"So we can leave this establishment now?" Henry half-rose from his chair. Dean nodded.

* * *

The alley way was narrow, steam rising in the cool air, leaf fall filling the cracks and crevices of the doorways, piled against the dumpsters. Graffiti coloured the walls and the door Henry paused before had been painted over, the symbol carved into the top panel half-obscured.

Dean looked up at the store sign over the doorway, advising passers-by that Astro Comics inhabited the building.

"No," Henry breathed, his fingers tracing the symbol gently. "This is a façade, a way to rook our enemies into believing we are housed elsewhere."

Rolling his eyes, Dean turned to Sam. "You know when you can just feel another massive time-wasting moment on the way?"

"Give him a minute, Dean."

* * *

Henry opened the door and walked inside, unsure of what he was looking for, only that if he took too long in finding it, the only people he had left, the only ones who could help him would leave.

Dean and Sam followed him down the hallway and into an open series of rooms, comics and action figures, posters and fantasy art murals covering the walls completely. Henry looked around the room, struggling to hide his bewilderment.

"Hand me your walkie-talkie," he said to Sam, realising he should have tried this hours ago.

"You mean my phone?" Sam asked, pulling it out of his pocket.

"Even better," Henry agreed, taking it and holding it in front of his mouth. "Operator, I need Delta 457."

Dean closed his eyes. "Who are you … not calling?"

"Our emergency number," Henry said, looking at him. Dean nodded understandingly and took the phone out of Henry's hand.

"Yeah. Not anymore." He passed it back to his brother.

"They can't all be gone," Henry said, looking around. "There must be another Elder out there who can help us discover how to stop Abaddon and what to do with the key."

Dean looked at the girl standing behind the counter. Dressed in a black vinyl jacket, spiked dog collar around her neck and an eye-shadow application that must have taken an hour at least to apply, she was using a bright-red laptop.

"Hey, uh, hi. Can we hijack your computer for a hot second?"

Behind him, Henry laughed. "Like you could fit a computer in this room."

The girl's gaze shifted to Henry for a moment. "Sure."

"Thanks," Dean said, turning the laptop around and angling it toward his brother. "Sam."

"Yep. All right, um... give me a name – anybody who, uh, might have been there that night – one of those Elders." Sam minimised the apps running and brought up the news search screen.

Looking over his shoulder, Henry watched wide-eyed as Sam typed in commands. "Um... Ackers, David. Larry Ganem. Um, Ted –"

"Okay, here it is. August 12, 1958," Sam said, reading the listings and clicking on the first one. "Tragic fire at gentlemen's club. 242 Gaines Street."

"This is 242 Gaines Street," Henry said shortly. "But that was no fire."

Sam skimmed through the article in front of him. "Larry Ganem, David Ackers, Ted Bowen and Albert Magnus – all deceased."

"Albert Magnus," Henry repeated.

"He a friend of yours?" Dean asked.

"Even better." He turned away abruptly and walked out of the room. Sam looked up, closing the search engine down and swivelling the laptop back toward the girl as Dean followed Henry out.

"Hey, Henry," Dean said as he caught up to Henry at the door. "What's going on?"

"We need to go to the cemetery," Henry said. "I need to see the graves."

"We're on a slight time-table here," Dean said, looking back for his brother. "Paying your respects, that's nice and all, but –"

"No," Henry snapped impatiently. "There will be a message for me there."

"From one of your dead buddies?"

Henry stared at him as he stopped by the car. "I believe so."

Sam walked up beside him. "I know that name."

"You do?" Dean's brows rose questioningly. Sam nodded.

"Albertus Magnus was a Catholic saint, an advocate for the peaceful co-existence of religion and science in the Middle Ages," Sam said, getting into the car.

Henry snorted as he slid into the backseat. "That's not all he was."

Sam caught Dean's expression as his brother started the car.

"What else was he?"

"He was the greatest alchemist and magician of the Middle Ages," Henry said. "The knowledge he gathered for the order was unmatched."

"Huh," Sam said, not looking at Dean. "So why is he buried in Iola, Kansas?"

"He's not." Henry watched the sun sinking below the horizon as Dean drove out of town. "We used his name – or a variation of it – as an alias, if we needed to travel incognito."

"Incognito," Dean repeated softly. Sam shot a quelling look at him.

"Unrecognisably," Henry said stiffly, hearing the remark. Dean looked in the mirror.

"I know what incognito means."

Sam sighed.

* * *

Dean pulled off the road next to the cemetery gate and they got out, turning on their flashlights, the beams flickering over the headstones and tombs, through the trees and along the paths.

"Okay, can we narrow this down a little?" Dean asked. The cemetery seemed to cover acres.

"It will be a private plot, fenced off from the rest," Henry said. "On the eastern boundary, and planted around with hawthorn and rowan and oak."

"Right." Dean turned left and followed the winding path through the trees and graves until the beam of his flashlight picked up the boundary fence. A clump of trees sheltered a private plot, the picket fence surrounding it leaning slightly.

"Look like a winner?" Dean asked, walking to the lych gate. Henry looked at the tombstones within the plot and nodded.

"As you say, a winner," he said absently, walking along the edge of the graves as Sam shone the light over each of the headstones. "These were my mentors. My friends."

He stopped in front the headstone engraved with David Acker's name. "My only friends."

"Here's Magnus," Dean said, holding the light steady on the headstone. "I know this."

Henry glanced over at it. "It is the crest of Litteris Hominae, our order, the Star of Solomon."

"My mother had this on a charm bracelet," Dean said. The memory came with only a little prodding, the flash of the silver charm in the morning light as she'd poured milk over the cereal in his bowl. He'd asked her what it was, and she'd told it was a magic star, for protection of the wearer.

"Star of Solomon," Sam repeated softly. "Yeah, it was in the Key of Solomon, the one Bobby gave us for the devil's traps."

Henry's mouth quirked to one side. "So it would seem that you have learned some things of use in spite of your upbringing."

Sam saw Dean's shoulders tighten and he stepped around Henry quickly.

"The only one of these headstones without the star is this one. Larry Ganem?"

"I believe someone planted the name in the article, one of the order, designed to lead anyone who knew what they were looking for here," Henry said slowly, looking at the headstone. A cruciform symbol had been carved above the name and dates and he crouched down in front of it. "This is the Haitian symbol for speaking to the dead. This is the message."

Straightening up, he turned to look at them. "You two ever exhumed a body?"

Dean smiled. "Once or twice."

They went back to the car for the shovels, and started digging. Dean glanced at Henry who remained on the graveside, watching their progress and holding the light in mostly the wrong place.

"Tell me how we got stuck doing this?" he muttered to his brother as Sam's shovel hit the coffin.

"Quit griping and give me a hand," Sam said, tossing his shovel out of the grave and crouching down to clear the dirt from the coffin lid. They lifted it together, out of the hole.

In the coffin, a soldier lay in uniform. An old uniform, Dean thought, looking down at it.

"Hey, was, uh, Larry a World War I vet?" He looked up at Henry.

Henry shook his head slowly. "No."

"Well then, who's the stiff?"

"I have no idea," Henry watched as Sam lifted a metal tag from the skeleton's body.

"Captain Thomas J Carey, the third," he said, reading it. "Mean anything to you?"

Henry shook his head. Dean sighed.

"Well someone wanted you to see this so maybe that someone is Larry?" He glanced at Sam who nodded as he straightened up.

"So … what? He survives the attack, and hides out with this guy's identity?"

"Walking and talking like a duck, Sam."

"I agree," Henry said, getting to his feet. "What are we waiting for? Cover this up, and we'll be on our way."

He turned and started to walk back to the car. Dean watched him go and looked at Sam.

"If I shoot him now, that won't actually erase our existence, right?"


	25. Chapter 25 A Family Legacy

**Chapter 25 A Family Legacy**

* * *

_**Iola, Kansas**_

The Strip 91 Motel was a couple of steps up from sleazy with an eye-searing wallpaper in yellow, silver and gold. The room held two queen-sized beds, a sofa, small, round plywood table painted in gloss white and four matching chairs. Henry sat on the sofa, his eyes half-closed, whistling softly as Dean searched through the county's records for Captain Thomas Carey, the third's current address and Sam made notes on the searches he'd done earlier.

"I know that," Sam said, turning toward Henry. Dean looked at him, a hint of a smile curving his mouth.

"'Casablanca'," he said to Sam dryly. "'Play it, Sam'. Don't you remember? Every damned time the movie was showing Dad'd watch it."

Henry looked at him, smiling slightly. "Your father saw 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy' at the drive-in one night. It scared the beeswax out of him. So I got him this little music box that played that song to help him sleep at night. It worked like a charm."

Sam shook his head. "It's kind of hard to believe Dad was ever scared of anything."

Dean's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked from his brother to Henry. He rapped lightly on the table top, drawing the attention of both. "Hey, uh, according to county records, Tom Carey lives in Lebanon, Kansas, and is a very happy one hundred and twenty-seven-year-old," he read the details from the screen and looked at Sam, closing the laptop. "I say we get some shut-eye, head over first thing in the morning."

Sam frowned at his notes. "Why is Abaddon so much more powerful than the rest of the demons in Hell?"

Henry closed his eyes, leaning his head back. "There were nine, originally. The nine angels who Fell from Grace with Lucifer in the Rebellion of Heaven and were thrown into the Pit with him. Lucifer tortured them for a thousand years and they were twisted and deformed and transformed into the first demons. The archdemons."

He opened his eyes and looked at Sam. "They were made from angels and had no souls, and when Lucifer had finished there was nothing left in them but a darkness so deep no light could ever penetrate it." He gestured vaguely. "The mythology said that they each ruled a level of Hell, but they were in the Pit with the Lightbringer so it's difficult to say if that was true or not. Legend has it that they were killed by the archangels but that too is unverifiable, at least at this time. And Abaddon's presence here seems to belie the legend anyway."

Sam felt a shiver trickle down his spine. There was so much they didn't know, so much legend and lore that covered the world they lived in that they had no idea about. Even those he'd thought were knowledgeable, his father, and Bobby and Rufus, seemed to have barely scratched the surface of what was out there. It raised something inside of him, that knowledge. An itch to know what they knew, to know for sure the things he could only speculate about.

Henry looked at the leather-bound journal lying on the table and lifted a brow. "You say that belonged to your father?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah."

"May I?"

Sam felt Dean tense beside him and pushed the journal across to the edge of the table closest to Henry as he got up and reached for it.

"I was supposed to teach him, he was supposed to be one of us," Henry said quietly as he sat down at the table, opening the journal.

"Well, he learned things a little differently," Dean said coldly.

"How?" Henry looked at him, seeing the hostility in the man's face. Whatever had happened in his son's life, he'd secured the unyielding loyalty of his eldest son, he thought to himself.

"The hard way," Dean bit out, unwilling to share the details of his father's life with the man who'd left him alone. "He had everything taken away from him, including his soul. But you know what? He kept going. And in the end, he did a hell of a lot more good than he did bad." He flicked a look at Sam, daring him to say anything different.

"I'm sorry. I should've been there for him," Henry said, looking at the journal.

"Yeah, it's a little late for that now, don't you think?" Dean stood up, walking past Henry and grabbing his coat.

"It's the price we pay for upholding great responsibility. We know that," Henry said reprovingly, raising his voice a little.

Sam winced inwardly, watching his brother stop and turned around, his hand tightening into a fist around the material of the coat.

"Your responsibility was to your family," Dean said angrily. "Not to some … glorified bookclub!"

"I was a Legacy." Henry refused to turn and face him. "I had no choice!"

For a moment, Dean stood there, just looking at him, then he turned away. "Yeah, well, you keep telling yourself that."

He opened the door and walked out, closing the door behind him. Sam looked at Henry, who kept his gaze fixed to the table in front of him.

"Dean …," he said softly, looking at the closed door. "He's pretty strict on family. He would kill or die for them … hell, he has." He looked down, the corner of his mouth lifting humourlessly. "He just … betrayal by family is just worse than anything else he can think of."

"I didn't know, Sam," Henry said bitterly, turning to look at him. "I was doing what I had to do, what I thought was best – I didn't know I'd never see him again, never see him grow up, become a man!"

Sam nodded. "He was a good man, he did what he thought he had to do. And he did his best too. Sometimes it wasn't good enough, but he always did what he thought was best."

He got up and walked to the door, opening it and following his brother to the bar across the street that he was pretty sure had been Dean's destination.

He found him there, as expected, sitting at one end of the long L-shaped bar, nursing a beer. Nodding to the bartender, Sam walked over to him and sat down next to him, taking the beer the bartender brought, twisting off the top.

"How could he leave his son like that?" Dean asked bitterly, staring at the bottle in his hand.

Sam shrugged. "How could Dad have left us for days at a time, put the responsibility of taking care of me onto you? How could Mom have made a decision that killed her, tore our family apart, forced our father into a life he didn't want, turning us into hunters? How could you sacrifice yourself for me? How could I have trusted a demon over you?"

Dean scowled at him. "You got a point?"

"Henry was doing the best he could. Same as Dad. Same as Mom, same as you and me. We fucked up. All of us." Sam tipped the bottle up, swallowing a mouthful. "You want to blame Henry for trying to keep something safe from a demon? Our history isn't squeaky clean in that arena, Dean. I know you don't want to hear it."

"Then why're you telling me?"

Sam's smile was wry and one-sided. "Because I'm tired of pretending that there were good reasons for any of it, Dean. I didn't have good reasons. I had good intentions. They're not the same thing."

* * *

Dean twisted on the bed, eyes screwed shut as memory invaded his dreams.

_Sam staring at him furiously. "Yeah, well, you're a hypocrite, Dean. How did you feel when dad sold his soul for you? 'Cause I was there. I remember. You were twisted and broken. And now you go and do the same thing. To me. What you did was selfish."_

It was the only choice, there was no way he could live if he let his brother die, there was no way for him to keep going, no way to look at himself in the mirror, no way to carry on.

"_Sam's almost there, but not quite, you need to help me get him ready, for life without you; to fight this war on his own," Ruby had said to him, in a parking lot, the yellow sodium lights glaring over the wet asphalt._

_Life on his own. You're abandoning him, Dean, gonna leave him to fight this war on his own. No big brother at his back. That choice still looking so good? Was this what you wanted for your brother, to have face Lilith alone?_

_He rolled over, arms tightly folded across his chest, cold and unsure and hollowed out. Sam could've gone back, gone back to school, gotten out, lived his own life … that's what he'd thought, that's what had driven the decision. He never could, but his brother could've … except that he knew now that wasn't true, had never been true. He'd thought it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do at the time. And time had proved that Sam was doomed, he was doomed, both of them trapped like flies in honey._

_No good reasons, Dean. Just good intentions._

* * *

"Hey!" Sam's voice, behind him. Angry. Dean curled his arm closer around the pillow. "Wake up!" The fast thwapping of something across his shoulder.

"What? He rolled onto his elbow, resentfully opening his eyes. "What!?"

"Henry – he's gone," Sam said, standing beside the bed, his face tight.

"Where is he?" Dean asked groggily.

"No idea. He just left a note saying he was gonna fix everything," Sam snapped, turning away.

Dean groaned, sitting up. "Or screw it all up."

He rolled off the bed, feeling the cool of the floor seep through into his socks and reached for his boots. He felt tired and disoriented, the sleep he'd gotten had been broken and restless with dreams and memories and unpalatable insinuations.

"Any coffee?" He looked at Sam's scowl and leaned down to tie the laces.

"Now we know what he meant by 'fix everything.'" Dean said, as he walked back into the room ten minutes later.

"What?" Sam turned around, looking at him.

"He broke into the trunk," Dean said. "Stole an angel feather."

Sam's brow creased up. "We had an angel feather?"

Dean glanced away, shrugging. "Yeah, well Garth said they were pretty in demand for spells, he had a buyer and uh, Cas gave me a few."

Sam stared at him blankly.

"Anyway …" Dean gestured vaguely around the room. "He's got one. And I'm guessing he's going to try and open another portal, take himself and Abaddon out of here."

"Take her back to 1958, where he still doesn't have any help?"

"Or grab Dad and haul ass? Does it matter? He's doing it."

"Not without the rest of the ingredients – and he said that he needed to rest his soul – so even if he tried, he probably won't succeed," Sam said, turning around and opening the laptop. "Tears of a dragon, a pinch of the Sands of Time … where the hell he's gonna find those?"

"I'll call Kevin," Dean muttered, pulling out his phone. Maybe those had been listed somewhere on the tablet piece that Kevin had deciphered.

"Hey," Sam said suddenly.

"Hmm?" He listened to the phone ringing out and cut the call, looking at Sam. "I think Kevin stiffed us on the new number."

"It just hit the wires – one dead at Astro Comics," Sam looked at the police log on screen.

"The demon?"

"Yeah," Sam said, looking up at him. "Has to be."

"She's close," Dean said, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "I'll go find Henry. You go find Larry. Maybe he knows how to kill this chick."

"Right," Sam said, closing the laptop. "Uh, Dean …"

"What?" He stopped at the doorway, looking back.

"Don't let her get him," Sam said, chewing the corner of his lip.

Dean nodded and walked out, getting into the black car and starting the engine. They needed a real way to stop the demon, even if they couldn't kill it, they needed a way to trap it. He twisted around in the seat and reversed out.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam checked the address again and pulled into the kerb, untwisting the ignition wires, the engine dying.

The two-storey frame house was white and grey and pale blue, the paint peeling and faded, the wrought iron fence separating the yard from the sidewalk rusting. Sam pushed open the gate, wincing a little at the drawn-out screech of the hinges, and walked up the overgrown path to the front door.

He knocked, and saw a twitch of the lawn curtains in the side panel a moment later. The door opened and an elderly red-haired woman stood there, looking up at him.

"Hi, I'm looking for Captain Tom Carey?" He looked down at her with his most ingratiating and reassuring smile plaster across his face.

"And you are?" she asked, her voice high but firm. He blanked for a moment, staring at her.

"Uh, I'm Sam … um … Page," he got out after a moment. "I was a friend of Henry Winchester's, and I wanted to let Mr Carey know that he'd passed."

"Oh. Oh dear," she said, glancing back over her shoulder down the hall. "That's terrible. Do come in, Larry will want to hear about it himself, I'm sure."

"Thank you, ma'am." Sam smiled awkwardly as he inched past her and waited until she'd closed the door. He followed up the bright hall, and into a pleasant living room, white painted walls reflecting the sunshine and filling the room with light, simple, varnished timber furniture providing a contrast. Sam stopped at the doorway, seeing an old man sitting in a plush wingback armchair, reading.

"Larry? This nice young man has something to tell you about a friend of yours," the woman said gently, laying a hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Eh?" He turned his head, putting the book down on the table beside the chair. "Who?"

"Uh, Mr Carey?" Sam stepped forward into the man's eyeline and held out his hand. "I'm Sam Page. I found your name among the papers of Henry Winchester."

"Henry?" Larry glanced at the woman. "Vera, could you please make us some tea?"

"Of course," she said, glancing at Sam as she turned to leave.

"Where is he?" Larry leaned forward, the side of his face lit clearly now. Sam saw the twisting scar that pulled the man's right brow down, travelling across the eye socket and to the edge of the cheekbone, the eye lifeless under it.

"He's dead, sir," he said quietly. "I found his journal. And some personal effects."

Vera came back into the room, carrying a tray with a teapot and china cups. She set the tray on the table and poured, smiling at Sam as she lifted the lid of the sugar pot. "One lump or two?"

"Ah … none, thanks," Sam said, looking past her at Larry.

"So, Henry is dead," Larry said, his hand curled into a fist. "I was so sure that – that he had survived."

"Yes, well, um, like I said – I found his journal and was hoping you could fill in the gaps and explain to me what happened that night in 1958," Sam said, leaning forward.

"It doesn't matter. They're gone," Larry grated. "We're gone."

"But Abaddon is not."

Behind Larry's chair, Vera looked at him, her eyes widening slightly.

"Demonspawn very rarely have the strategic skills to plan things on their own, Mr Page," Larry said. "Abaddon was under orders, whose we never knew. She killed us all that night – but she did not get what she'd come for."

"The key."

Larry smiled humourlessly. "Ah yes, the key."

"What is it? What does it unlock?" Sam asked urgently. "She is here and looking for it now."

"The key unlocks the collections of two thousand years of study, Mr Page. Objects and spells, manuscripts and histories and demonologies, angelologies, the hierarchies of the greater and lesser creatures of Purgatory and the Natural Plane and gods, goddesses, sprites, elementals and pure forces of this world and many others like it," Larry said slowly, his face softening slightly as he returned to his youth in his memories.

"The order was formed originally to gather the knowledge, to study it and categorise it and learn from it, glorified librarians really, having no idea of what to do about such things, but keeping them hidden, keeping them in the dark," he continued. "Nine hundred years ago, when the Church began to seek out power, and became corrupted, we dissolved the ancient society in which it had all began, and divided it, into separate sects, with limited membership, in the hopes that if one fell, the others could continue, could keep our secrets safe."

"And the world went on, and we did too. Gathering, studying, learning. In the fifteen hundreds, when the old countries were too small to hold the greedy and ever-growing populations and exploration was the new sport of kings, we spread out as well, to the new worlds that the ships had found."

He leaned forward, his eye fixed on Sam's face. "We brought that knowledge here and buried it deep, and encircled it with ward and guard, with a mazon of spells and walls of illusions, to keep it safe."

* * *

_**Iola, Kansas**_

Dean drove slowly down the street, options and possibilities ticking over in his mind. He saw the store and pulled into the kerb, a prickling at the back of his neck that he'd found the right place.

Henry stood in front of door at the back of the store, the sigil glowing golden and casting its light over his face, his voice low as he spoke the incantation.

"باز کردن راه را برای خون به خون ..."

"Henry, wait!" Dean called out from the door, hurrying to him.

"No. I brought this demon to this place. The blood of those she's killed here lies on my hands, Dean."

Dean grimaced, unable to argue that. "And what if you die, huh? Who says you'll even survive a jump? You told us that your soul needed rest!"

Henry turned around to face him, his expression haggard. "You cannot begin to understand how I felt after reading John's journal."

"Oh, I think I can," Dean said, his gaze cutting away. "See, I've read that thing more times than you can imagine, and it hurts every time."

Henry looked at him unhappily. "Maybe so, but you didn't let him down. I did! Just like you said!"

"Well, I was wrong." He heard the words come out, without thought, without realising that he was going to say them.

"No! No, you were right. And I'm going to go back and give him the life he deserves, not the one he was forced to live," Henry argued. "You were right. My family was – is – my first and most important responsibility, and I failed them."

"Get used to it, Henry, it comes with the job," Dean said acerbically. "Listen, I understand that this is not your idea of a happy ending, okay? And that – that you're disappointed that me and Sam are mouth-breathing hunters … but if you do this, and you die, nothing will have changed except that you'll be dead – and Sam and me, we'll be fighting this hell bitch on our own, without the knowledge that you have that could help us."

He closed his eyes briefly. "I saw my father in 1973. He'd just done two tours in a war that broke a lot of men, and he came back unbroken. He fell in love with a beautiful girl, and he had ten years with her, before it all went to hell. His life after that sure wasn't what he wanted – but that had nothing to do with you."

"How do you know that?" Henry stared at him.

"Because it was my Mom's choice that brought everything down," Dean said unwillingly, feeling his throat tighten and close at the admission. "She … there was nothing Dad could've done about it, and he tried his best to keep me and Sam safe, and prepare us and teach us what we needed to know."

"Why – how –" Henry stammered, looking at the pain that was etched into the face of the man in front of him.

"Why are you telling me this now?" He tried again.

"Because we need to figure out how to kill or disarm or neutralise this bitch somehow, and we need your help," Dean said, forcing the words past the thickness. "Family stick together, right?"

Henry looked away. "Right."

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam looked at Larry. "So ... Abaddon is looking for this knowledge, this repository?"

"For her master, perhaps. To turn it all against us, counter our resistance, deflect our offences, destroy our safeholds. Yes," Larry said slowly.

"How do we stop her? How do we kill the demon?"

Larry smiled humourlessly. "You don't. You can't. There is nothing that can kill one of the Fallen, except an angel – a powerful angel. And I – I have heard that they are gone." He took a pen from his pocket and a small notebook, putting it on his knee and writing. "If you know where the key is, then take it to these coordinates. Throw it in. Shut the door forever. And walk away."

"What? Why would I do that?" Sam looked down at the pad Larry held out, seeing a fine tremble in his fingers as he took it. The old man's story was reverberating in him in a way he couldn't understand, couldn't get a grip on.

"Because it is the safest place on earth. It is impervious to any entry, except the key," Larry said, his face expressionless.

"But then all that knowledge would be – would be lost and gone forever," Sam said, his mind reeling at the thought. All the answers? That he and Dean desperately needed? That the other hunters needed? Perhaps answers to questions they didn't even have yet?

"And that is the price we have to pay for keeping it safe, Mr Page. Knowledge … knowledge is never lost. As long as people search for it, it will be found again. And I suppose that, in time, that knowledge will be gathered and studied and written down once more. Long, long beyond the length of my years – or yours," he said comfortably. "You do... have the key, don't you?"

"I don't, but, uh… my brother... my brother does," Sam hedged as he stood up.

Vera stood up as well. "I'll escort Mr … Page … out, dear," she said, walking behind Larry's chair. Sam smiled at her, looking down at Larry as he passed his chair, and didn't see the fist that swung toward him, hitting him precisely below the temple with the weight of an axe.

Vera looked down as he crumpled to the floor, her eyes a flat black from corner to corner.

Larry heard the blow. Heard the young man fall to the floor. Smelled the taint of brimstone filling the air where his wife's perfume had been. "Abaddon."

Vera turned to look at him speculatively. "The years have not been kind, Larry."

She drew a short, broad-headed triangular blade and slashed across his throat, the knife cutting deeply through the arteries and cartilage, back to the bone. The arterial spray spattered over the tea tray and the table, the crisp, white slipcovers and the white wall, filling the air with the sweetish metallic scent.

* * *

_**Iola, Kansas**_

"So this demon is a Fallen angel – which is why the knife can't kill her?" Dean searched through the storeroom for the ingredients that Henry had told him.

"Yes," Henry said absently, reading through store catalogue. "The only lore we've found on the archdemons is that only an angel – and not just any angel, but one of the seraphim – can kill them. They can draw the power from a living body as well as the souls damned in Hell, literally drain the life force out of you if you're close to them."

"Peachy." Dean pulled out a box from the shelf, looking at the label and making a face. "Eyelashes."

Henry nodded, leaning forward to take the box from him.

"A devil's trap?"

"Abaddon's holds all of Josie's memories, Dean. She will not walk into a trap and a devil's trap must encompass the entire body to be effective, it has no spreading field of influence."

"Holy oil – if she was once an angel?" Dean searched through his memories for anything that could be of use as his eyes scanned the shelves.

"If we had it, yes. That would work," Henry nodded thoughtfully. "At least, I'm reasonably sure it would. But unfortunately a trip to Jerusalem might take a little long for our current time-frame."

"But there must a way to slow it down …" Dean said, trailing away as a memory hit him. "What about a binding sigil? On the meatsuit?"

Henry looked at him. "You're referring to the Seal of the Dead?"

Dean blinked. "Uh, maybe?" He walked to the table and pulled a pad and pen over toward him, drawing a circle with a line through one edge. "That."

Henry shook his head. "No, that will never hold a Fallen. But this …"

He drew a circle with a triquetra in the centre, and an inverted triangle over it. "Yes, that may hold her indefinitely."

"What is it?" Dean looked at the drawing, committing the design to memory without thinking.

"It is called the Seal of the Dead," Henry said, looking around the shelves. "The triquetra is drawn with one line, representing infinity, the triangle focuses the energies of Heaven, Hell and the Earth into a binding lock for the circle."

"We have to get her to step into it?"

"No, that's the beauty of it, you see," he said, seeing the box of cat bones on the shelf to the left and walking over to get it. "The Seal of the Dead will work because it acts on the very thing that the archdemons draw on – the life force. They can't help themselves and the design of the Seal takes their draining and turns it back on themselves, in an endless – infinite – loop. It won't kill her, but it's like a – a straightjacket, immovable, unbreakable, impervious."

Dean looked at him, seeing the excitement in his eyes. "Man, I see where Sam gets this from now."

"What?"

"Nothing," he said, turning away, his mouth quirking. "What else do we need?"

Henry opened his mouth to tell him, when the shrill ring of his phone filled the room.

"Sammy?"

"No. Much sexier," a warm, female voice purred at the other end of the line. "Try again."

"Abaddon."

"Good boy," the demon's voice held a smile and Dean's finger tightened on the phone. "Now listen up – I want to make a good, old-fashioned horse trade. Henry and the key for your brother. Or little Sammy dies. Am I clear?"

"Crystal."

"Good," Abaddon said. "Four miles out of Lebanon, there's a processing plant. Don't keep me waiting."

Dean looked at the phone as the call ended.

"She has Sam?" Henry asked from behind him. Dean nodded.

"A trade?"

"Yeah."

Henry smiled at the anger in his grandson's voice. "This will be our opportunity, Dean."

Dean turned to look at him. "To get you killed?"

"To get close to her," Henry corrected him. "To stop her once and for all time."

"How?"

"Did you see any salamander tongues on those shelves?" Henry asked, picking up the rest of the things he'd gathered. "I'll explain in the car."

* * *

_**US-54 W, Kansas**_

"The Seal of the Dead is normally made as a seal," Henry said, staring through the windshield as the car's headlights lit up the road. "Usually of lead, an inert metal, with the activators inside two sheets that are then sealed together."

"She's not going to let us walk up and hang something like that around her neck," Dean commented dryly.

"No, precisely," Henry said, nodding. "And we need something that she can't get rid of."

Dean lifted an eyebrow as he glanced at the man beside him. "You mean … like … a bullet?"

Henry started to smile slightly. "Yes, that's what I mean."

"I can get one apart, but getting it back together again is going to be tricky," Dean said, turning the problem over in his mind. "Maybe …"

"I meant to ask you, before, how it is that you have an angel feather in your trunk?" Henry said suddenly.

Dean chewed on the corner of his lip. "Uh, well, someone told me that they were kind of pricey, so I asked a friend if he could spare any."

"Your friend has angel feathers to spare?" Henry asked, his surprise evident in his voice. "They _are_ very rare and very expensive."

"Yeah, well, he's an angel, so he had a few."

Henry turned his head to look at the man behind the wheel. "You have a friend who is an angel?"

Dean felt the intensity of the stare and lifted a shoulder in a defensive shrug. "Yeah. Why, is that something else only us muscle-bound hunters do?"

Henry's eyes widened. "No, not at all. I mean, that's fascinating that you actually know an angel."

Dean looked at the road. He didn't think 'fascinating' was the word he'd use.

"How did you meet the angel?" Henry said diffidently, a moment later. "What is his name?"

"Uh, his name is Castiel, and – it's a long story," Dean said, flicking a sideways glance at Henry.

"Of course," Henry said, a little stiffly.

Dean frowned. "I'm not lying, it's just that a lot happened, and it kind of goes on and on, especially after Death got involved."

"Death?" Henry interjected. "I don't suppose you're referring to the actual multiplane entity who controls the flow across the –"

"Well, yeah, Death," Dean said, a little mystified by Henry's tone. He couldn't work out if the man was disapproving or trying to hide his excitement. "We summoned him when Cas started to get delusions of grandeur."

"Oh."

Dean looked at the road for a moment then turned his head to take a good look at Henry. "You about to blow a gasket, man?"

Henry shook his head. "My apologies, I – I – I just can't believe how casually you're relating these – these experiences. Befriending an angel. Talking to Death … I wish …"

"What?"

Henry shrugged helplessly. "I wish we had time to talk – I would – I would give a lot to hear about your life."

Dean's lip curled slightly. "It's not that interesting, Henry."

"I beg to differ," Henry said, his voice rising a little. "Reading about these things, learning them, studying them for years on end … I loved it. But this – you've done the things I've only read about. You've lived them. Breathed them …"

"Nearly died from them," Dean added sardonically.

Henry looked at him for a moment. "This – what you've done - this is a life."

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

The plant was dark and still and silent when the Impala drove in along the wide entrance road, gravel popping under the tyres. Dean followed the road to the loading dock, pulling up when he saw the lights inside.

"You're gonna have to get close. And 'close' means it's gonna get ugly." Dean turned to Henry as he turned off the key.

"I know," Henry said, looking at him steadily. "Reluctant hostage, terrified bookworm, harmless and defenceless. I've got it."

"That bullet … it's kind of hinky now," Dean said, his face screwing up a little at the memory of pounding the cartridge back on. "If you can, press the end of the gun hard the skin, it should do."

"I'll remember," Henry nodded. "You and your brother, John really trained you well. You – I wish –" He looked down, mouth curling up to one side.

"Yeah." Dean said abruptly. "Me too."

He turned away, opening the door. "Let's get this show on the road."

* * *

The room was dimly lit and cavernous. Sam and Abaddon stood at the other end. Dean pulled in a breath and let it out.

"I'll send Henry here over with the box. You do the same with Sam. No tricks."

He turned to Henry and put the wooden box holding the key into his pocket, pulling the jacket out a little as he pulled his hand out, the cloth hiding what he held in his palm.

"My only interest is Henry and the key," the demon said, her voice projected easily across the space. "You two are free to go."

Henry stood there, staring at her and Dean pushed him a little, pulling out his gun.

"You can do this standing, or you can do it crawling. Your call," he said loudly, lifting the barrel.

Henry looked at the gun and started to walk. At the other end of the room, Sam began toward him, his hands bound in front of him.

"Henry, I'm sorry," Sam said softly as they passed each other. Henry kept his eyes on the demon.

"Save it."

Sam reached Dean and lifted his hands, the knife in Dean's hand slicing through the rope bonds with a single smooth cut.

Looking back at Henry, Sam said: "Don't do this, Dean. This is a bad idea."

"Shut it, Sam. Let's go." He turned back to the big sliding door. "Come on."

Sam turned away as Henry reached Abaddon, following Dean to the door. Before they reached it, it rumbled across the opening, closing with a clanging echo from the metal walls.

Dean spun around. "We had a deal!"

There was a peal of laughter from the demon. "Surprise! I lied."

She turned to Henry, still smiling and thrust her hand into his abdomen, closing it around his organs. Henry moaned through tightly clenched teeth as she withdrew it slowly, blood spilling from the wound, spreading in a rapid stain across his shirt front.

"Henry!" Sam started toward him and Dean put out his arm, stopping him.

"Wait," he told his brother, his gaze fixed on Henry. "Wait."

Henry let the handcuffs drop to the ground behind him, forcing his hand to tighten on the grip of the handgun as he stepped toward the demon.

"You're not the only one."

He rammed the barrel hard against the underside of her jaw and pulled the trigger, feeling his strength disappearing as his blood ran out. _A little longer_, he told himself. _Just hold on a little longer_.

The demon coruscated wildly inside the skull, the flickering light dying almost immediately.

"Whoo!" She blinked, smiling. "What a blast." The smile vanished as she turned her head to stare at him. "Now, give me the box."

Henry stood still, the gun still held in his hand. He couldn't see her properly, she kept wavering in and out of his vision, like a shadow behind old glass.

Looking at him sourly, the demon reached into his jacket pocket, feeling the smooth square inside and pulling it out. She looked at the pack of playing cards in her hand in disbelief for a moment then flung it to the ground, turning on her heel to stare at Dean.

"Where is it?!" Her voice rose and fell between a woman's high shriek and a deeply guttural roar, and around the room objects fell from shelves, crashing to the ground and into each other, the lights flickering and disintegrating in explosions of sparks.

Dean looked around, waiting for anything more, feeling his shoulders loosen slightly as nothing came at them. He'd done it, he thought. He'd bagged the bitch.

Abaddon frowned, turning to Henry. "Okay. We can do this the hard way."

Her hand snapped out and closed around Henry's jaw like a vice, forcing his mouth open as she breathed a thin tendril of charcoal smoke toward him. It was stopped a few inches from her, curling around and dissipating against an unseen barrier.

"No."

She shoved the man to the floor, twisting around, her feet locked to the floor.

Sam ran to Henry, lifting him away from the demon as she threw back her head and screamed in fury and frustration.

"WHY AM I STUCK!?"

Henry looked up at her. He was cold, and he could feel his pulse slowing, little by little as his body, in trying to protect his core, restricted the pumping of his blood directly to the torn hole in his flesh. It didn't feel so bad now, the nerves shutting down. He felt drowsy and triumphant and – like a hero, like one of the heroes he read about in his books.

Abaddon stared down at him, her face screwing up into a scowl as she saw the glint of triumph in his eyes. "You still didn't kill me!"

Behind her, Dean smiled. "No, but you'll wish we did."

He swung the machete in a fast, clean stroke and watched her head bounce across the floor.

"The seal in your noggin is gonna keep you from smoking out or doing – pretty much anything," he told the demon. "We're gonna cut you into little fillets and bury each strip under cement. You might not be dead, but you'll wish you were."

Henry looked up at him, struggling to keep him in focus. "We did it," he said, feeling his mouth fill with blood.

"No, you did it," Dean said quietly as he crouched in front of his grandfather. "For a bookworm, that wasn't bad, Henry."

"You know – know – Albert Einstein?" Henry asked, coughing a little.

Dean looked at Sam, and nodded slowly.

"He said … once … the only source of knowledge is experience," Henry said, his chest hitching as he tried to drag in a breath. "He was – was right … I learned … learn …ed."

Dean felt his chest constrict as he watched the light fade out of Henry's eyes.

* * *

_**Iola, Kansas**_

Sam swung the sledge and the simple wooden cross descended another few inches into the ground. They'd dug the grave beside Magnus', the five Legacies of Litteris Hominae side by side in the small private plot.

Dean watched as his brother swung again, the cross going deeper as the iron head hit the top of the post. Sam'd told him that the trees surrounding the plot were protective, and he hoped that Henry would feel the protection. Sam stepped back. H. Winchester had been cut into the cross-piece. Above the name, Dean had carved the Star of Solomon.

Dean thought of Henry's face, alight with excitement when he'd heard a little about Cas. It'd been a very different aspect to his grandfather, that boyish delight and the yearning in his eyes, the superiority gone, replaced by an admiration that even in memory made him shift uncomfortably.

He looked at Sam. "Samuel told me once that the Campbells came out to this country on the Mayflower," he said, looking at the cross.

Sam looked at him, brow creasing as he wondered what was on his brother's mind. "And?"

"I don't know," Dean said slowly. "Doesn't it feel … somehow … planned to you? Hunters from Mom's side – and now this – this Legacy business from the other?"

"That Cupid we met in Ohio – he told us Heaven went to a lot of trouble to make a Campbell-Winchester union. You think that we're supposed to be doing this?" Sam asked curiously. In his pocket was the wooden box holding the key.

"And there's this." He pulled the box out and held it up.

"You think the place is still standing after all this time?"

"Larry said it was the safest place on earth," Sam remembered, shrugging slightly. "I think we need to go and see."

"God."

"What?"

"You in a room that's wall-to-wall books and answers," Dean said, the corner of his mouth lifting derisively.

"Maybe it's where we're supposed to be, Dean."


	26. Chapter 26 Kaddish

**Chapter 26 Kaddish**

* * *

_**1941, Vitsyebsk, Belarus**_

The harsh chatter of machine-gun fire was overwhelmed by the screams and wails of the witnesses, bouncing and echoing down the narrow cobbled streets even as the gutters ran red with blood. The two men looked at each other and drew the collars of their coats higher around their ears, slipping away into the shadows of the closely built buildings.

"There is no hope that God will save us from these monsters," Isaac Bass said bitterly to his companion. "This we will have to do for ourselves, and hope that He will give us strength."

Beside him, striding into the dark, Aleksei Yavoklevich nodded in agreement. Under his coat, his fingers slid over a small, silver pin, feeling its shape and comfort in its power. He would need to report in, as soon as the creature had been raised and set about its purpose. The order would need to monitor the group from now on, and provide help if they were able.

The problem of the others, the dark magicians who'd adopted the party with an appalling ease, that too would have to be dealt with. He suspected he would be told to leave for Berlin, in the not-too-distant future.

The snow fell ever more thickly, coating the buildings and the uneven streets, freezing the bodies and the blood in the square they'd left behind them, covering the atrocity in a blanket of virgin white.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

"Slow down," Sam said, staring at the coordinates on his phone and the map held under it. "Should be right around here."

Dean glanced up the narrow road, and flicked a look at his brother. "It better be, we're running out of road."

Sam looked up, seeing the forest closing up ahead of them. He scanned the thin woods to either side of them. "There."

Dean let the Impala roll to a stop, a few yards from the road's end, and beside the small utility hut, set back off the road to the right. "This is it?"

Sam frowned, looking down at the phone and map. "We're right here."

"Looks a little … small, don't you think?" He leaned against the wheel, looking past his brother at the frame and metal building. It was bigger than a public phone booth, but not by much.

"I don't understand," Sam said, opening his door and getting out. "This can't be it."

Dean turned off the engine and opened his door, looking over the roof of the car. "Maybe Larry stiffed you on the right location?"

"No," Sam muttered. "I'm sure he didn't."

He took several steps toward the hut, and stopped, staring at it in confusion. Most of the front wall was taken up with a metal and timber door, with the decal of Kansas Gas & Electric plastered over it. He looked back at Dean, who shrugged.

"C'mon, there's nothing here, Sammy," Dean said quietly. "I need food and sleep."

* * *

The room was dim and silent, Dean's restless movements against the heavily starched sheets only a slight distraction to Sam's thoughts. Larry had been definite, he thought for the thousandth time since they'd turned around and driven back. He wondered if he could've gotten on the numbers wrong, it'd been handwritten and by an old man … he sat up, hand swinging out to turn on the lamp on the nightstand, sweeping up the piece of paper with the numbers in the same movement.

No.

None of the numbers were ambiguous.

_"Because it is the safest place on earth. It is impervious to any entry, except the key."_

Larry's low voice replayed in memory. Safest _how_? Impervious … _how_?

_Because it does not look like what you seek_, a small voice whispered at the back of his mind. _It hides in plain sight, a run-down and abandoned site hut for a state utility company and who, really, would suspect that it held the greatest treasure in the world?_

An illusion? They used spells, the society, to find out things, to travel … to hide?

"Dean!" He rolled off the side of the bed, stumbling over his boots and grabbing his jeans.

"Dean, wake up!"

"Not again," Dean mumbled into his pillow, closing his eyes more tightly.

"Come on, it's there," Sam said, hopping around the room as he pulled on his socks. "It's hidden, but it's there."

"G'way."

"Get up!"

"M'tired, Sammy, s'just dream," Dean rolled over and pulled the pillow right over him.

"You've got thirty seconds before I get a pan full of water," Sam threatened, dragging his shirt on.

He wouldn't, Dean thought muzzily, half the fragments of what had been a great dream still floating around behind his eyelids.

Sam pulled on his boots, looking at his unmoving brother in the next bed. He yanked on the laces and tied them, then clumped to the kitchenette and opened a cupboard, rummaging loudly through the meagre collection of pans and pots in it.

Dean heard the clanging and sat up. "You wouldn't."

"You're up now," Sam looked over the counter at him. "Come on, it's there."

With a deep and very audible exhale, Dean rubbed a hand over his face and looked around the floor for his clothes.

* * *

The moonlight lit up the dead end brightly and Dean stopped the car, leaning back and closing his eyes. "Looks like the same crappy little hut to me."

Sam opened his door and dug in his pocket for the heavily carved box, pulling it out as he strode across the road. He was right about this, he could feel it. He pulled out the old-fashioned iron key, with it small engraving of the Star of Solomon on the grip and reached out a hand to the door of the hut, vaguely hearing the driver's door open and close and the slow footsteps of his brother walking up behind him.

The air around the door felt thick and viscous, like putting his hand against oil. "Look at this," he breathed.

Dean leaned past him, his attention focussed on Sam's hand as it pushed and slid across a surface clearly not the door itself. Reaching out tentatively, he felt the resistance on his fingertips, his mind offering the feeling of axle grease as the closest comparison.

"Gross," he said, pulling his hand back. "How do we break it?"

Sam lifted the key and pushed it into the illusion and they both blinked as the illusion vanished as completely as if it had never been there. The hut was gone. They stood in front of a door, twice the width and half again the height of a normal-sized door, with an oily black patina over the smooth, metal surface, set seamlessly into a concrete wall. The wall had been framed and poured against the side of a hill, and Dean blinked as he noticed how high it rose. In the illusion, it hadn't been there at all. To one side, a keyhole was a deeper black. Sam pushed the key into it and twisted it.

Inside the door, there were a series of deep clunks, and a rattle of gears. Sam glanced to the side of the door, seeing no hinges or even more than a paper-fine line between the metal door and the equally smooth metal frame that held it. The noises stopped and he pushed the door open, holding his breath warily. No smell of stale air rushed out at them.

"Ventilation must be good," he commented, pulling the key out and stepping into the darkness beyond.

"Let's hope everything else is, too," Dean said, following, his flashlight beam flicking on. "How long has this place been empty?"

"Well, fifty-five years, at least, I guess," Sam said. They were on a high gallery, overlooking a deep, wide room below. The lights picked out tables and chairs, shelving and a series of old devices, against the wall.

"Huh, ham radio," Sam looked at the ancient set. "Telegraph. Switchboard." He turned around to look at Dean. "This must have been the nerve centre."

"Why didn't one of the other sects take over when Henry's bunch were killed?" Dean said, walking left along the gallery as Sam turned for the stairs leading down to the room.

"Good question." Sam shone the beam over a large table, a map of the world painted meticulously over its surface, a number of markers resting on top. It was a strategist's table, he realised suddenly, showing … cases? Wars? Areas of interest? He'd have to go through the documents to be sure.

Halfway along the gallery, Dean saw a box on the wall and stopped, opening the door. Circuit box. He looked at the switches, both in the off position now, and a number of fuses below them. He couldn't see any signs of burning or broken wires, they looked like they'd just been switched off.

He lifted the first and a low, resonant hum rumbled through the floor and walls, deep enough to reverberate faintly in his teeth. Around the room, the filaments in the old-fashioned light bulbs heated up and light filled the room. Looking down at Sam, he saw his brother switch off his flashlight, tuck it back into his pocket.

"Generators?" he called down. Sam nodded, glancing up at him.

"Yeah, from the sound and the start up time. Hard to tap into KG&E if you're pretending not to be here." He looked down at the floor. "How big do you think this place is?"

"No clue," Dean said, lifting the second switch. He turned as he heard his brother's low whistle below. Beyond the room, on another half-level more lights had come on, illuminating a large room. The walls were lined with shelving, from the floor to the ceilings high above, the centre of the room held long, polished tables. Every shelf was filled with books, manuscripts, papyrus and skin scrolls, coarsely-stitched hand bound texts.

_Nirvana_, Dean thought, glancing down at Sam with a one-sided smile. From his vantage point he could see doors leading out of the library to both sides. In the room immediately below him, the war room, he'd already mentally nicknamed it, he saw more doors, two per wall, leading to other parts of the building.

He walked down the stairs and followed Sam up into the library, looking around. A sideboard sat to one of the half walls next to the broad, shallow flight of steps leading to the war room, a silver tray set with several crystal decanters and a dozen glasses, the light reflecting from the delicate facets. Above the sideboard, a framed map of the continental United States of America gleamed dully under the dusty glass. On the other side of the stairs, a tall, heavy black cupboard with glass-fronted doors held more books, older looking and worn.

Sam walked along the shelves, skimming over the titles, most of which were too worn to read, some in Latin, some in Greek. To one side, before the door to the left near the end of the room, a carved and polished bookstand held an a large, old parchment book open, and as he got closer he recognised the diagrams, drawn finely in ink, on the pages. The Key of Solomon. They still had Bobby's copy, in Whitefish, down in the basement with the hundreds of books Bobby'd managed to replace before he'd died. Looking around the room, he felt a brief and savage wish that the old man could've seen this.

The door ahead stood open and he walked through it, the lights already lit in the wide hallway he came into, more doors leading off from it. The first three were private offices, more shelving lining the walls, filled with books, more ancient and modern – relatively modern, he amended – maps framed and hanging in the spaces that were clear. Big timber desks, with green or red or black leather tops, sat in the offices, which seemed to have belonged to the senior members. Everywhere, there were occult objects, charms and symbols, sigils and seals, some casually left on the desks or in cupboards, others set in glass-and-timber frame cabinets, neatly lettered labels in front of them.

Beyond the offices, he came to a staircase, one flight leading up and the other leading down from the broad landing. He glanced behind, seeing no sign of his brother, who'd probably gone the other way and he started up the flight to the floor above.

Another long hall extended straight from the top of the flight, doorways evenly spaced along it. He opened the first, looking into a large and well-appointed bathroom, a huge, enamelled cast-iron, claw-foot tub taking up half of one wall, the tiled floor and walls gleaming in cream and a soft green, the cabinetry polished and sealed timber. Set into the floor between the door and the tub, a devil's trap had been drawn out in small golden tiles.

The next room was a bedroom, spacious and containing a carved and polished walnut double bed, the spread a warm golden brocade, the Star of Solomon picked out in brighter gold bullion in the centre. It held a capacious armoire and several chest of drawers and cupboards and a small writing desk. Shaking his head, Sam stepped back out of the room and moved along to the next one.

All the rooms along the hall were either bedrooms or bathrooms, all with the same furnishings, the same linen, the same detailing. He came out of the fourth identical bedroom and saw Dean coming up the hall.

"This place is like a hotel," Dean said, rubbing his eyebrow tiredly. "All bedrooms and bathrooms down that way."

Sam nodded. "Here too – how many were there?"

"Six bedrooms, three bathrooms," Dean said.

"Yeah, same on this side," Sam agreed. "Not a hotel, though. A club house, I think. Home away from home."

"Think there'll be any water?"

"I don't know." Sam turned around. "There's another flight of stairs going down."

Dean shrugged. "Sure, why not spend the night walking around?"

Sam ignored the comment and hurried toward the stairs he'd come up. The place was unbelievable, a complete set up for them, safe, guarded, comfortable, filled with a reference library and – and – and who knew what else?

He went down the stairs and stopped when they reached the lower level, looking at a further flight that led deeper still.

"Go down to the bottom and work our way back up?"

* * *

It took nearly two hours to work their way through the whole building. At the lowest levels, they found the generators, eight huge diesel gensets powered in serial, four running, the other four idle, gleaming with grease and oil and sparking interest in Dean as he walked around them, checking everything he could think. An engine-driven pump connected to a multitude of copper pipe was also down there, and as they both looked over the valves and runs of the pipe, the plumbing for the building became more obvious.

"Someone put a hell of a lot of time and thought into this place," Dean had remarked as they'd climbed up to the next level.

Sam agreed. "Someone meant this place to survive anything."

The next level up had killed conversation completely. Room after room were filled with shelving and cupboards, glass cases and boxes and crates stacked unevenly along the walls in places, filled with the relics, the artefacts and objects from around the world that had a place in supernatural mythology and legend. It was Plutus' auction, multiplied by a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand. They looked at the items, gold, silver, metals neither recognised, glass and crystal and materials that defined identification completely. All catalogued, Sam noted, seeing the neatly arranged card drawers and filing cabinets. Hopefully with their lore, their origins and their uses detailed.

There was an apothecary, the walls lined with glass-fronted shelves, filled with jars and boxes, bottles and small, shallow drawers, the scents of herbs and spices, of poisons and cures and skin and bone and old, dried blood thickly filling the air. One wall held filing cabinets with a tall bookcase to one side, dark brown ledgers packing the shelves. Sam walked over and pulled one at random from the shelf, opening it.

In a fine, copperplate hand, the dark blue ink filled the page, detailing the cure for the bite of the _Vlost Wurm_, _a creature of subterranean habitat in northern Germany, see catalogue C-1001344 for complete details_. The recipe was clearly explained, the diagrams scientifically drawn and, he thought, probably anatomically correct. He flipped through the pages, glimpsing spells and poisons and cures and divination liquids and herbal tonics on them, and he closed the book and set it back into its place with a faint, disbelieving sigh.

All the answers. Perhaps not all, but so many that the advantage might truly be with them for a change. He looked at the single bookshelf with it's numbers of books and thought of reading them all – of reading all the texts on the other floors. No matter how long it took, he was itching to do it.

Beside the apothecary, were store-rooms, holding barrels and boxes and chests of many of the ingredients required for the apothecary's shelves, or for other works that they didn't know anything about. Feathers and scales, claws and teeth, bottles of liquids with labels that read out of a fairy-tale.

"Do we still have the list for the demon bombs?" Dean asked quietly, looking at the labels on the containers surrounding him.

"Cas had it, Kevin could make us another, I guess."

"I'll go see him," Dean said, the decision made abruptly. If they had the ingredients here, in this kind of bulk, he could make an arsenal and give Crowley the fright of his life. The thought raised a wide grin.

The last room at the end of the hall was rectangular and almost empty. Shelving lined the walls and the books that were there were wrapped, in silk and chamois and linen. The oldest texts, Sam thought, lifting the coverings carefully on one. The History of the Lilith, the title read, and he swallowed against a surge of memories, wrapping it again. One day, he would read through these, all of them and then he would know for sure if he'd allowed himself to be played or if he'd truly had no choice in the matter. But not today.

"Sam, check this out," Dean said from the other side of the room. He stood next to a metal door, embedded in the wall.

"A safe?"

"Looks like."

"Can you crack it?" Sam looked at him curiously as he rested the side of his head against the cool metal door.

"Maybe. It's an old one," Dean allowed softly, turning the lock slowly, hearing the clicks through the reverberations in the metal.

The combination was six numbers and he opened it after a minute's work. Inside, several long, deep metal boxes sat on shelves. Sam pulled one out and Dean took another, setting them down on the table in front of the safe. The boxes weren't locked and they lifted the lids. Sam's box held share certificates, a lot of them, and his eyes widened as he fanned through them, the familiar names leaping out at him, the numbers of shares held astonishing. Dean's box held two dozen black silk bags. He pulled one out, pulling the drawstring free and tipping the contents onto his palm. The light sparkled and reflected and refracted from the simply stones, prisms of colour lighting up his skin. Diamonds, he thought, picking one up that was the size of a large shooter. He had no idea of what a stone like that could be worth, but he suspected their pool-hustling days might actually be over.

The other boxes held money, printed in the '50s, some smaller esoteric items that even Sam couldn't identify and in the last one, an envelope with the logo of a Pennsylvania law firm in the top left hand corner. Sam opened it and started reading.

"Title deeds, a lot of them, not just to this place; corporate papers defining the society as a legal entity, probably for the property purchases; bank accounts, trust accounts … " he muttered softly under his breath, flipping through them. "We should see this firm, Dean."

Dean looked up, frowning. "Why?"

"These shares, the dividends from them, over the years, even in a single year at the prices they're valued at, they're going into the Litteris Hominae's accounts. We need access to those accounts –" He gestured around the room vaguely. "This is all fine for just reading and staying in, but we need to be able to tap into the research that's available online and – and buy fuel for the generators …"

"What makes you think they're going to give us access to that money?" Dean asked, an edge of mockery in his voice.

"Because the accounts are accessible to whoever holds the key," Sam said, holding out the letter he'd just read.

"Huh."

"Yeah."

* * *

From the sub-basement, they climbed back up to the main floor, finding the kitchen, with pantries, cool rooms, butler's pantry and scullery; a long, narrow dining room, with a formal dining table and a dozen chairs, sideboards and dressers, all in the same beautifully fine-grained and polished timbers that had been used throughout the rest of the building.

It was the four rooms on the other side of the library that really got Dean's attention, however. Each was quite small and they led, one into the next, along the exterior wall of the building. The first two had no shelving. Pin-boards with pegs and racks took up every wall and hanging on them was every kind of weapon either had ever seen. Guns, of all makes and models, from powder-and-ball muskets to the Enfields and Webleys, Browning and Lewis guns of World War II. Bows, unstrung and hung in descending sizes, long bows and recurve, cross-bows and the simple short bows of the Plains Native Americans, designed for shooting from horseback. Swords, from the simple bronze gladius of the Roman Legions to the exquisitely folded samurai swords of ancient Japan, Arabian scimitars, cutlass, epee, rapier, long swords and broad swords. Spears and javelins, halberds and shields and plate armour, chain mail, leather and brass and iron greaves and cuirass and vambrace and helmets.

"Holy cow," Dean breathed, turning in a slow-motion pirouette as he crossed the first room. Beyond the armoury, the last two rooms held ammunition. Shelves of it. Floor to ceiling. Boxes and bags and footlockers of it.

"So I guess it's okay to stay now?" Sam asked, his voice holding a faint edge of derision. Dean looked at him blankly.

"Sure, yeah, whatever," he said, turning back to the shelves, finding the boxes for the Colt he carried, eyes widening slightly as he read the labels – spelled cartridges and silver, iron-tipped and salt-filled … there was a small box labelled Sirens Blood. He shook his head disbelievingly.

* * *

_**York, Pennsylvania**_

The law offices of Bronson, Maurice and Yaklolevich were located in a small, old building on a corner. Dean and Sam had sat watching the building for two hours, noting who came in and who went out. People had come out, and returned. They hadn't seen a person go in.

"Not much of a clientele, huh?" Dean commented, watching as the buxom red-haired secretary returned to the building and walked in.

"Doesn't look like it."

"You still want to do this?" He wasn't sure about it himself. The benefits would be substantial but his name and image were still embedded in a dozen or more law enforcement agency databases and he didn't like the idea of introducing himself in public.

"Yeah," Sam said, turning to look at him. "This is the break, Dean, the break we've needed for the last god-knows-how-long. We can concentrate on what we have to do instead of trying to make all the pieces fit with no resources, no help, no funding."

Dean slouched down in the driver's seat and sighed. He couldn't argue the logic.

"Alright, let's do it."

* * *

Inside, it was obvious that no thought of modernisation or renovation had ever entered the law firm's mind. The panelling that lined the walls was hundred-year-old oak, dark as ebony with age and polished to a high sheen. Their boots echoed from the sprung, hardwood floors and sank into thick, lush rugs as they approached the receptionist.

"May I help you?" She smiled at them, but Dean noticed that her smile didn't reach her eyes and her hand was under the desk. He glanced around the room, spotting the discreet security camera as it panned around the room to stop on them.

"I'd like to make an appointment to Mr Yavoklevich?" Sam said, tugging at the jacket of his suit as inconspicuously as he could. For some reason it no longer fit as well as it had.

"One moment, please," she said, picking up the handset of the phone at her desk and listening. "Mr Yavoklevich can see you now, if you like. Just through that door."

Hiding his surprise, Sam turned to look at Dean, one brow lifted slightly. Dean nodded and they turned and headed for it.

It opened into a very short corridor, with a single door at the other end. Above them, the fluorescent flickered once, then stabilised as Dean reached for the door knob. Neither missed the implication of the flicker and Dean's fingers were already lightly touching the hilt of the knife in his coat as he swung the door open.

The office, after the dimness of the rest of the building, was filled with light, pouring in through the broad, multi-paned sash windows on two sides of the room. It was a very large room, a desk with a bank of monitors and keyboards facing them, legal tomes in a large bookshelf and several filing cabinets lining the other wall.

Mr Yavoklevich was an old man, Dean saw, leaving the knife where it was for the moment as he rose from behind the desk and walked around to it to greet them. Fine, white hair adhered here and there to the spotted and wrinkled scalp, dark brown eyes peered out from beneath the sagging folds of skin of brow and eyelids. His grip was firm and the suit he wore was immaculate, tailored silk in a very soft dark grey-green fabric.

"Mr Yaklovlevich, thank you for seeing us on such short notice –" Sam started to say, holding out his hand as the old man reached for it.

"Mr Sam Winchester," Yaklovlevich said dryly, glancing at Dean. "And his older brother, Mr Dean Winchester. Your knife is not necessary at this moment, Dean, I'm neither demon nor ghost nor any other kind of monster."

Dean hesitated and the old man smiled. "Sit. There is a lot to discuss."

He gestured at the two armchairs in front of the desk as he walked back around and drew a file from the drawer. It was thick, bound with red legal ribbon and it thumped against the desk blotter heavily as Yavoklevich dropped it.

"You've found both the key and the safehold, I take it," he said, sitting in the chair and looking at them. "Let me see the key."

Sam drew it slowly from his jacket pocket, holding it up. Yavoklevich nodded.

"The possessor of the key has the rights to the deeds and funding of the sect."

"How'd you know who we were?" Dean asked him suspiciously, looking around the office.

"Ah modern technology is a wonderful thing," Yavoklevich said lightly, opening the ribbons and the file. "Our security cameras took your image, ran it through a couple dozen databases and … yes, here we are."

He picked up a thin sheaf of papers. "Dean Winchester, born January 24, 1979. Height, six foot one inch, weight, two hundred pounds, hair – dark brown; eyes –green; small scar on the right side of chin; scar on the right side of forehead … hmmm … let's see, multiple arrests, charges … credit card fraud, GTA, grave desecration, assault, attempt to murder, murder … yada yada yada … believed dead." The old man looked up at him, smiling slightly. "I believe that covers it, yes?"

"Sam Winchester, born May 2, 1983. Height, six foot four inches, weight two hundred and ten pounds, hair – light brown; eyes – hazel; no distinguishing scars … a less impressive rap sheet than your brother, but that's only what the public knows, isn't it, Sam?"

Yavoklevich looked at him, eyes twinkling under the white brows. "One of the first things we need to do is remove these references to you both from the federal and state databases. And check your identification. It is changing very rapidly now. The cost is a little more but we can issue the new papers at the same time as they're being issued to the actual departments, so I believe it is worth it."

Dean and Sam exchanged a dumbfounded glance.

"Now, as to the accounts –," he said, looking past the file and pressing a button on his desk. "Myra, we'll need the new cards, signatory papers in both sets of names, and identification verification insertions in one hour."

On the speaker, a bored-sounded female voice responded. "Yes, Mr Yavoklevich."

"Good, bring them in when they're ready." He looked at them. "Do you have any questions?"

Sam felt his mouth drop slightly open. "A few."

Yavoklevich smiled. "We have been doing this for a long time, gentlemen. The procedures have been in place for almost as long, updated to suit the changing times, of course." He leaned forward. "I was very pleased to see that the building had been opened. It meant that Larry had found someone suitable to pass the key to, and people such as yourselves are not so easy to find in these times."

"You knew when we entered the building?"

"Yes, of course," the old man said, brows lifting. "Each of the safeholds reports on its status here. At least in this country."

"So you know all about the society?" Dean asked, frowning.

Yavoklevich's smile grew wider and he eased the lapel of his suit jacket aside, revealing a small, silver pin, on the breast pocket of his shirt. The pin had been wrought in the Star of Solomon.

* * *

_**US-36 W, Illinois**_

The Impala's engine rumbled soothingly, a basso hum that Dean could feel through his feet. The headlights picked out the lines on the road and he drove easily, the stereo playing quietly, enough to drown out Sam's soft snores from the passenger seat. In between them, a stack of files had slid out of their neat pile and drifted against his brother's leg, all of them with the unicursal hexagram printed on the covers. They were, apparently, the updated and detailed workings of the order, of which they were now – apparently – members, by virtue of nothing more taxing than showing the old man the key.

He wasn't sure he trusted the order or the secrecy in which it operated. It was probably hypocritical of him, but it bothered him that Yavoklevich had known so much about them and they had little so information on him, or anyone else in the organisation.

As digs went, on the other hand, he couldn't fault the building. It was secure, private, comfortable as all get-out, conveniently located in the middle of the country and had more than enough room for them. And it was a hell of a resource.

But he could feel the sticky fingers against his back. Pushing him and Sam into something they didn't know enough about. Pushing them to be something or to become something that he didn't know if he wanted.

He glanced at Sam's over-sized frame, hunched between the door and seat, the side of his face pressed against the glass. It was what Sam wanted, he thought. Or, at least, it was something that suited his brother, perhaps more than hunting did. He wasn't sure about that. They hadn't talked about anything, not related to day-to-day stuff since they'd left Whitefish.

The last couple of months had left him with a backwash of conflicting and confusing thoughts. About himself. About his brother. About his life. About the things he didn't want to spend time thinking about it, if he could possibly avoid it. He'd lost the clarity of Purgatory a lot quicker than he'd thought he would. Lost the ease of decision-making. The sense that he'd know what to do.

Some of that came from the feeling that they were just waiting, waiting for Kevin, waiting for Cas, hanging around and waiting like a couple of wallflowers at a dance. Ever since he'd heard that there was a way to shut the gates, to end the particular nightmare of demons and Hell and Crowley, most particularly, he'd been itching to get onto it, to find it, to get moving on it. But the closer they got to an answer, the further it went away from them. They'd had the tablet, and Kevin, and lost them both. Crowley had had both and lost them in turn. It was a weird, uncomfortable and damnably frustrating dance that none of them seemed to know the steps to.

Now, they had a whole new pile of secrets and mysteries to unravel and he couldn't raise the energy for it. They had a job. A big, fucking important job.

_"There's so much you don't know. You need me."_ The demon's voice echoed through his thoughts again. There was a lot they didn't know. There was too much they didn't know. Why had Crowley run, when they'd broken in to save Archie? Why had Cas killed the poor sonofabitch the second they'd rescued him? Why was Kevin having such a hard time reading the fucking tablet?

He saw his arm swing down in his memory, the serrated knife punching into the demon's chest. He didn't regret that decision. Not entirely. Mostly, he didn't. Because Sam'd been right. Demons lied. All the time. Especially when it came to saving their own skins. He shoved the thought aside impatiently, and drummed his fingers against the leather grip of the wheel.

Was he coming up short tactically? Had he lost the edge he'd come out of Purgatory with? He didn't know. Couldn't tell, anymore. Deeper things nagged at him.

Maybe the society held the answers he was looking for. He didn't know that either and looking around at the books and everything that filled the building, he'd been drowned in a feeling of futility. Reading through all those books? That wasn't him. He could manage focussed research. Not sifting through millions – or billions – of words looking for answers that he hardly knew the questions for. He needed action. He needed to work. To do things, kill things, save people.

_Atone._

The word, the _feeling_, came out of his subconscious like a savage right hook and he jerked back slightly against the seat. Was that what he was doing? Trying to do? Buy his way back to feeling less like a monster by saving as many as he could? By doing as much as he could?

"_Have you got that low of an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head?"_ Bobby's voice, low and raw and filled with pain and bewilderment. It'd been that moment that he'd seen that the old man would've done anything for him, but he hadn't recognised it, hadn't acknowledged it until Bobby had wrestled control from the demon and driven the knife into his gut.

"_How can you care so little about yourself? What's wrong with you?"_ His brother, drinking to dull the same feelings, pain and confusion and a desolation because Sam had realised so much earlier than he had where he'd been heading and what it meant and that he was never coming back.

"_What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved?"_ Castiel, the angel's eyes searching his face for an answer that he couldn't give, couldn't face up to. No, the answer was, but it felt – too exposed, too exposing to say it out loud. Even to an angel. No. He didn't.

The memories were all deep. Not deep enough to keep them from floating free in the night, but deep enough that he could enjoy driving, behind the wheel with the road stretching out and the music playing and not a thought in his head about anything. Deep enough that he could sink a beer or three and not need to drown them out with whiskey morning, noon and night. Deep enough that he'd thought he could live a normal life, right up to the moment when he'd realised what that would cost.

He looked at his watch and thought he could keep going, through the quiet hours of darkness. They'd be there by dawn.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam's fingertips circled over his temple, rubbing unconsciously at the mild pain of the headache centred there. He was sitting at the library table, several stacks of files surrounding him, including the law firm's, reading. He'd cross-checked the lists of associates and contacts, groups and individuals that he'd found against the public records he could now access via a wireless modem to his laptop. Most of those the order had been in touch with were dead, long dead in point of fact. Several groups were impossible to find, although he had the sense they were still out there.

There'd been a few familiar names in amongst the files and he was getting a sense of the network of people who were working in the shadow world, not just hunters but researchers, people with specialised skills, groups with ancient contacts. It was far bigger than he'd imagined and he thought of Henry's rising despair when his grandfather had begun to believe that he'd been alone.

In Henry's time, the world had been smaller, and communications simpler. Now, there were a million ways to hide much more effectively. And over the last few years, the dangers to the people who lived in this life had risen dramatically.

From what he could tell, could piece together, a lot of the groups had been wiped out over the years between Dean's rescue and the killing of Dick Roman. Angels and demons, ghosts and the Horsemen, and the devil himself had targeted and destroyed the experienced members, leaving initiates with little knowledge or power, or no one at all. While the forces for good had struggled and died, the forces of evil seem to have flourished and prospered in a world where in fifty short years money and power had become the new gods and life – human life – had decreased dramatically in value.

He leaned back, closing the file in front of him. They were out there, he thought tiredly. Just hiding themselves too effectively within the ones and zeroes of a data-centric world.

He'd replaced the equipment in the war room. A dozen processors sat humming along the long tables against the wall of the room now, running searches on everything he could think of, automated bots looking tirelessly through the news of the world, through the databases he could access, through the death notices and obits of a hundred online newspapers, looking for names, looking for keywords, looking for signs.

Getting to his feet, Sam walked slowly down to the kitchen. He'd updated the lists with the deaths he'd found, and learned a lot about the inner workings of the society, thanks to Yakovlevich's files. It hadn't helped to realise just how much there was that he still had to learn, had to absorb. The answers he wanted could've been in one or more of the books that filled the building, in an ancient text or carved into the rim of some object held here – but reading them one by one, it would take him a lifetime to find them.

Opening the fridge, he pulled out the fixings for a sandwich and set them on the long island bench, his hands busy with the task while his thoughts rocketed ahead. Dean would be back in a couple of days. His brother was hoping to be able to use the things here to be able to tip the balance back into their favour against Crowley, even if Kevin hadn't managed to find the way to close the gates yet. He was, in fact, itching to take the fight to the demon, although what use it would be, at this stage, hadn't been articulated.

How much of what they'd done, of what had happened, had actually been preordained, Sam wondered uneasily? There was free will and he could see its effects, but fighting against the things that were going to happen, one way or another, because they'd been written in the stars a millennia ago, that was a waste of their time and their energy.

Picking up the sandwich absently, he stood at the bench and ate it, the food pushing the headache back a little.

* * *

_**I-70 W, Missouri**_

Dean watched the traffic automatically, fingers light on the wheel, adjusting his speed with unconscious reactions that required no thought at all.

Kevin'd looked like all kinds of hell, and had been mostly out of it when he'd arrived. The list was still there, though, lying in among the loose piles and drifts of notes and drawings, and he'd grabbed it, his eyes running down the items, matching what was there with what he'd noticed in the store rooms. They had quite a lot of what they needed on hand, he'd thought.

He didn't want to think about Cas, but the angel drifted into his thoughts anyway. The blood trickling from the corner of one eye. The oddly blank expression on his face, as if he'd been listening to something, someone, while he'd spoken to them. The strange choice of words before he'd left … all of it sounded alarm bells in his head and set off the prickling sensation at the back of his neck and he couldn't imagine what had been going on with him.

The angel hadn't responded to any of the prayers he'd sent out into the ether. He didn't know what to think about that. So far as he knew, he still had the Enochian wards over his ribs, but Cas had managed to find him, find them, anyway. It raised another question. Was the building in Lebanon warded against angels? They hadn't seen any sign of the sigils and guards that they'd expected, covering the walls of the building when it'd become visible. Had the order known about them?

His attention refocussed on the road as he crossed into Kansas, turning west to bypass St Joseph. Just another couple of hours or less, he thought distractedly.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

The key worked, the hut disappearing and the door opening with its clunks and rattles, and he walked in, shifting the gear bag over his shoulder as he came down the stairs.

"Hey."

"Hey," Sam looked up from the files on the table. "So? How's Kevin doing"

"I don't know, he's okay, I guess," Dean said as he came up the steps into the library and dropped his bag onto the table. "In his corner, hacking out his Da Vinci code."

He walked out and down to the kitchen, getting a beer from the fridge and returning to the long room.

"Nothing actionable yet," he continued, walking up to the table and looking over the stacked files surrounding Sam. "Anything from Cas?"

Sam looked at him, his forehead wrinkling up a little. "No, not a peep. You?"

Dean lifted the top file off, reading the label on the one beneath absently. "No, he's not answering."

"Right," Sam looked at the laptop screen in front of him. Dean was worried about the angel, but it wasn't the first time Cas had been unresponsive. Of course, the last time it'd happened, the angel had been plotting with the King of Hell to open the gate of Purgatory … he shoved that memory aside and shook his head slightly.

"Well, so I have been trying to chart the order's network of hunters, their allies, affiliated groups they worked, kept files on –"

"Circa 1958?" Dean interrupted, his tone mildly mocking.

"Yeah, true," Sam acknowledged. "Most are dead, or defunct but others, I'm not so sure. And this one –" He picked up a file marked with the Star of Solomon and passed it over the table. "We should definitely check out."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face as the file dropped to the table in front of him. "The Judah Initiative?"

He opened the file. A black and white photograph showing a number of men was on the inside cover.

Sam nodded. "European team. They were active during World War II."

"Really? Hunters fighting in a war? That's cool," Dean said, looking at the photo.

"Not exactly hunters," Sam said quickly. "Not exactly … uh, fighting … but –"

"Rabbis." Dean skimmed through the first page. He looked up, one brow lifting. "Rabbis? Really?"

Sam gestured at the file. "The file on them is sketchy, but apparently they were hard-core saboteurs."

"Inglourious Bastards kind of thing?" Dean asked, looking down at the file again.

Sam grimaced. "Yeah, kind of. I ran a search on the Initiative's entire roster … and I got a hit." He brought up the news report on the screen. "One Rabbi Isaac Bass. He was seventeen years old when he joined the Initiative, and eighty-five when he died. Two weeks ago." Sam turned the laptop around on the desk.

"In a college town back East," he continued. "He was capped."

"Capped?" Dean pulled the laptop closer, pushing the screen back and reading the article.

"Yeah. He was there doing research and according to eye witnesses, he spontaneously combusted."

Dean looked at the screen. "So … this is a case?"

Sam inclined his head and Dean felt the last five hours drive drop heavily onto him. He picked up his beer with a deep sigh.

"I just got back."

"Well, get a clean change of underwear," Sam said cheerfully as he got up. "We need to get there as soon as we can. One of the things the file does have on the Initiative is that they were fighting the Thule Society."

"The what?"

"It was a group in Germany, occultists and folk-lorists supposedly. They sponsored the Nazis as a political party and were supposedly no more than over-zealous nationalists. Except …"

"Except?" Dean looked up at him.

"Except they weren't," Sam said, pulling another file from the stack beside him and sliding it across the table to his brother. "They were practitioners, not theorists. Black magic, sympathetic magic, symbolic magic."

"Huh."

"Yeah. There were a lot of accounts of people executed by the magicians of the society. Mostly dissidents against the party line," Sam said, gesturing to the file. "One of the more common methods was spontaneous combustion of the victim."

Dean nodded slowly. "Alright."

* * *

_**Wilkes-Barr, Pennsylvania**_

Dean drove up to the library's entrance and Sam got out, tugging at the jacket he wore. He walked up the steps to the library and over to the counter.

"Can I help you?" The librarian was a tall, balding man with dark brows and dark eyes, his bearing more military than civilian, Sam thought warily.

"Uh, yes. My name is Sam Page, I work – I was working with Rabbi Bass and I was hoping I could get a list of the materials he was researching here at the library?"

The man tapped a few keys on the computer beside him, his attention seemingly absorbed by what was on the screen. "So you worked with the late Rabbi Bass?"

"I was a research associate of Rabbi Bass, yes," Sam said, nodding. "I'm trying to complete his last paper for publication. I'd just like to review what he was after here."

"Well, that would be quite a lot of material," the librarian said shortly, looking at the computer monitor. "He was here open to close for almost a week."

"Wow, um … how bout just the stuff he was looking at … you know, the day he … uh … caught fire?"

The librarian looked at him expressionlessly. "That'd shorten the list a bit."

He turned and walked away, returning a few minutes with a large, grey plastic box and carrying it to a cubicle. Sam followed him, nodding as he turned away. On top of the box, a pair of white cotton gloves were plainly there to be used. He put them on awkwardly, waited impatiently for a woman to walk past and opened the box.

"_The Explorer's Guide to North American Birds"_ lay in the bottom. Sam felt his stomach drop.

* * *

The bar was a long, high-ceilinged room that was varnished golden timber everywhere he looked. The décor appeared to be something that was supposed to resemble a ski resort, maybe, Dean thought. The circular hearth in the centre, dim lighting from frosted shades hanging overhead. Ah, college bars.

"He was a really nice old kook," the dark-haired girl facing him said, nodding sagely.

"Really nice," the blonde beside her added, her head bobbing up and down sympathetically. Dean looked from one to the other.

"Kook? How so?"

"You know, he'd talk – a lot – to us, to himself, to anyone who'd listen," the blonde said, warming to the topic as she got going. "He was always talking about this secret war that nobody knew was going on –"

"Conspiracy stuff," the brunette interjected. "He was obsessed with Nazis." The blonde turned to her, nodding enthusiastically.

"But he said they were 'special' Nazis," she said, looking back at Dean and lowering her voice. "You know … necromancers."

"Necromancers," Dean repeated, brows rising.

"Yeah, you know, like from that 'World of … whatever' crap that my little brother is always playing," the blonde elucidated.

Dean felt a headachey throb behind one eye. _Don't know your friggin' little brother_, he thought tiredly, closing his teeth to stop that response from emerging. How was it that these were college girls, smokin' hot college girls and they couldn't hold a coherent thought in their pretty heads, he wondered cynically? The college girls he'd gone out with had been so smart he'd had trouble following their conversations.

"Nazi … necromancers," he said again, writing it down in the notebook in front of him that had hitherto been empty of useful information. _The Thule Society_, he thought. Sam would happy.

"It's sad, isn't it?" the brunette said, unaware of the patronising tone that was creeping into her voice.

Dean looked up at her quizzically.

"That old people have to go so crazy," she explained, lashes dropping over dark brown eyes in a show of sorrow.

"I know, it is sad," the blonde chipped in earnestly. Dean looked at her, deciding that something noncommittal was probably his least offensive option.

He shifted his gaze between them, noticing the young man several tables away. It was the third time he'd seen him, as he'd walked around the campus, and each time the guy'd made eye contact. Now he lifted his fingers from the table in a discreet wave, sipping from a long fruit and alcohol concoction with an umbrella sticking out to one side.

_What kind of asshole follows someone and then waves when they're made_, he wondered distractedly. _Get your head back here_, he told himself, struggling to remember the next question he wanted to ask the girls.

"You … uh … you both saw the accident?"

"I can still hear his screams," the brunette answered, her gaze dropping to the tabletop.

The blonde nodded. "It was like … the fire was alive, like-like it was attacking him."

"It was like watching the most watching the most awful movie of the most terrible thing you could possibly see," the brunette added fatuously, her eyes a little distant with the memory.

"It was like that," the blonde confirmed immediately.

_Did they hear themselves_, Dean wondered absently? There had to be something wrong with him because despite the smooth skin and the shining hair and the enticing curves he could see under their matching team t-shirts … he just wanted to leave. _Now_.

"Yeah," he nodded sympathetically, catching sight of the young guy at the far table again.

"Thank you, ladies, and I … uh … thanks," he said abruptly, getting up and leaving.


	27. Chapter 27 The Good Man

**Chapter 27 The Good Man**

* * *

The guy was looking down at his drink when Dean came around the pillar near the table.

"Special Agent Baldwin," he said, holding his ID open in front of him.

Small, slender build, a long face framed by short dark hair and a clipped beard, pale skin and a black coat over a sweater and collared shirt. Not the usual type he was used to seeing lurking around in the background. The guy was young, maybe just a grad student, maybe a little older. It was hard to tell.

"Well," the guy said, leaning forward to look at the badge in the plastic window of the leather wallet. "Oh … I thought you were a head-hunter or something," he said, looking up and smiling awkwardly.

"This is the second, maybe third time I'm seeing you today?" Dean said, brows drawing together. "Why are you following me?"

He watched the guy's expression fall, his eyes cutting away and back to him as he rubbed at the corner of his eye. "Oh … so … we didn't … um … we didn't have … a thing back there."

The words were in English, and he knew he should be getting what the guy was saying but it wasn't coming at all. Thing? Back there?

"Back where, wha-what now?"

"I'm sorry, man, I thought," the guy said apologetically, gesturing. "I thought we had a thing back at the quad …"

Dean leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he tried to work out what the hell the dude was actually saying. Thing? What the fuck was a thing? What thing? At the quad? What was a quad?

"… a little eye magic – moment – and I saw you here –"

Suddenly all the pieces came together. And fell on him. He slid his hand across the table, closing the ID wallet, looking around to see if anyone else was hearing this because the guy wouldn't fucking well shut up.

"- and figured I'd wait until you were done with your meeting and then we might … uh …" he trailed away, shrugging lightly at the possibilities.

"Yeah, uh … okay." Dean felt his stomach lurch and he swallowed hastily. "But no. No moment. This is … uh …" He looked down at the wallet nervously. What the fuck? Why the hell was the guy's mistake making him so goddamned uncomfortable? "A Federal investigation.

The guy leaned toward him. "Is that supposed to make you less interesting?"

Dean lifted his gaze, looking at him in confusion. Was this guy still coming on to him? _Why? More importantly, why was he still standing there?_

"No, I'm sorry, man, I hope I didn't freak you out or anything," he looked away, lifting a hand in apology.

_Shit. Fuck. Crap_. "Nah. No, no. No," Dean said, shaking his head. "Nah, not freaked out, it's just … uh … Federal … thing." He tucked his ID away, looking at him, suddenly, uneasily, aware that he was actually staring at the guy.

"Uh … okay … citizen," he cleared his throat, hearing his phone start to ring. _Get out of here. Get out. Get out. Get out_. "As you were."

"You have a good night," the guy said as Dean turned abruptly away.

"You-you-you have – uh –" He backed into the table behind him, glasses tinkling as they knocked against each other. "Okay."

Wheeling away, he strode for the door, grabbing his phone and bursting out onto the campus grounds.

"Yeah." He pulled in a deep breath.

"Hey," Sam's voice was loud against his ear, reassuring in its normality, although not nearly as reassuring as the distance he was putting between himself and the weirdness he'd just left behind.

"So I looked into the rabbi's research. Doesn't make a lot of sense," Sam said, walking out of the library and across the paved courtyard. "Um …"

A movement in Sam's peripheral vision caught his eye and he turned to look at the corner of the next building, seeing someone slip back behind it, little more than a flash of a pale shirt.

"… bird watching."

"Huh," Dean said, glancing back at the bar behind him. "Well, the two _very_ hot co-captains of the women's volleyball team agree that the rabbi's death was very unnatural. I think we've still got a case."

"That would explain why I have something stuck to my shoe," Sam said mildly, walking away from the corner in the other direction.

"You being followed?" Dean asked, the thoughts of volleyball captains vanishing abruptly.

"Yeah, I think so."

"That's weird. I thought I was being followed earlier. Turned out to be a gay thing," he said, trying to brush off the peculiarity of that encounter.

"What?"

"Nothing," Dean said, wishing he hadn't brought it up. "You need a hand?"

"Yes, please," Sam said, looking around. "Got someplace quiet?"

"Visitor's parking. The boonies. I'll park in the back, thirty minutes," he said, getting into the car and hanging up the phone. He turned the key and the rumble of the engine was even more reassuring.

Reversing out of the parking slot, he drove slowly around the lot, looking for the signs he'd seen earlier to the Visitor's lot, on the other side of the campus, his fingers drumming lightly against the wheel.

_What the fuck?_ It didn't matter how many times he repeated to himself that the girls had been hot. _Very_ hot. _Delectably_ hot. Neither had raised more than a fleeting moment's interest, barely a flicker of imagery. It would've been like going to bed with a couple of blow up dolls, he thought sourly.

"_I prefer ladies with experience."_

The memory rose, talking to Sam in the bedroom of the girl who'd been taken by a dragon. It'd been true then and he guessed it was true now. And apparently that'd been expanded a little to preferring ladies with some kind of capacity for reasonable conversation as well.

The realisation hit him and he almost laughed. The lack of response to the two girls had … well, yeah, okay, it'd worried him. He'd been with a couple of women since getting out of Purgatory and neither experience had been more satisfying than what he could've managed on his own. He wasn't sure what the problem was. Wasn't sure what the difference was. But the guy's blatant interest and his own disinclination to spell it out more clearly had both come as a shock, as if there was a small possibility or a vague feeling … he felt his stomach leap again, and shook his head.

There wasn't. He wasn't changing the habits of a lifetime. Didn't explain the lack of desire for the gender he _was_ interested in, but maybe that was a side-effect of what had been going on for the last few months. He'd had long, dry stretches before. _Not where any willing and comely partner was ignored because of their lack of potential conversation_, a small voice whispered at the back of his thoughts. _Yeah, well, that … that was weird_. Conversation or lack of it normally wasn't a factor.

He pushed the tangled mess of thought and emotion aside as he saw the Visitor's lot ahead. It'd sort itself out, sooner or later. Wasn't like he was going to die from the lack, after all.

* * *

The Impala was parked at the back of the lot when Sam around the last building, taking the keys from his brother as Dean passed him, heading in the opposite direction. He walked down to the asphalt lot, hearing the rustling in the bushes to one of the parking area, and dropped the keys, bending to pick them up.

Working his way around the lot through the thin woods and undergrowth, Dean saw the crouched figure staring at his brother from a few yards away, the pale shirt bright against the darker foliage. He moved up behind him.

"Hey, pal," he said.

The figure in front of him turned slowly, rising from the crouch to his full height in an endlessly long moment. Dean looked up past the tree-trunk legs, the wide, slab chest and monstrously huge deltoid muscles that lay over the shoulders to the man's head, out of proportion to the rest of the body, cold, blue eyes staring down at him.

He slammed a fist into the man's abdomen, feeling his hand creak at the impact, the reverberation travelling from knuckles to shoulder in the split second it took for the huge hands to clutch a handful of his jacket and wrap around his arm. He didn't realise he was moving until he saw the ground under him change from vegetation to the black asphalt and he only just managed to tuck his head down as he hit the side of the car with his back, feeling and hearing the window smash, dropping to the ground with one wrist awkwardly taking the brunt of the fall.

"Dean!" Sam spun around, his gaze going to his brother who was moaning on the ground, then drawn to the figure emerging from the bushes at the side of the lot. The huge figure. He scrambled to get the Impala's trunk key into the slot, yanking the lid open and lifting the false lid, and grabbing at the first thing he saw. His fingers tightened around the sharkskin hilt of the short machete and he swung the blade up and around as he turned to see the creature almost on top of him.

The blade sliced through the flesh easily enough and bit into the bone, wedging there as Sam looked up disbelievingly. He tugged at it furiously but it refused to come free and the man's lips lifted a little as his hand reached out and closed around Sam's throat and jaw, lifting him easily from the ground.

"Stop."

Incredibly, the creature did, realising its grip from Sam's neck and letting him fall, taking a step back as it looked to the small man who commanded it.

Sam looked at him too. On the ground beside the truck he'd hit, Dean muttered something indistinct about a sprain.

"What – the – hell – is - that?" Sam stared up at the creature in front of him.

"He's a golem," the young man said calmly. "He's my golem."

"Right." Sam felt his heartrate easing back to normal parameters. "And who the hell are you?"

The man shook his head. "I'd rather not talk here, out in the open like this." He glanced at the car behind Sam. "If that's yours we could drive to my place. It's safer."

"Fine." Sam picked up the machete, throwing it back into the trunk and shutting the lid. "Give me a minute."

He walked to where Dean was lying on his back, face scrunched up with the pain that was shooting from wrist to shoulder.

"You okay?"

"No!" Dean rolled onto his side as Sam crouched down to push him upright. "A golem?"

"I guess we'll find out all about it."

* * *

The house was small and ordinary, on a street that was narrow and ordinary and filled with dozens of others, all of them identically small and ordinary. Aaron pushed the key into the lock and opened the door, pushed aside as the golem entered the hall first. He followed it into the small living room, leaving Sam and Dean to close the door behind them.

"The rabbi who was murdered, he was my Grandfather," Aaron said, flipping on the lights. "When you guys started to follow up on his case, that's when we started following you."

The golem walked past them, heavy boots clunking over the floorboards. "Hmmm."

"What?" Aaron snapped at him. "Yeah, well keep walking."

Dean and Sam looked at each other.

"So that's a golem?" Sam asked, pointing at the creature as it disappeared into another room.

"Yes," Aaron said, gesturing to the sofa and chairs as he pulled off his coat. "Shaped from clay and brought to life by rabbis to protect the Jewish people in times of … I don't know … general crappiness."

"And he's yours?"

"Hardly," Aaron said disparagingly. "My Grandfather left him to me. I'm the last surviving descendant of this thing … this Initiative …"

"The Judah Initiative."

"Right," Aaron looked around, hearing the clumping footsteps of the golem on the other side of the house. "You want a beer?"

"Yeah," Dean said immediately, Sam nodding a moment later.

Getting three cans from the kitchen, Aaron handed them over and sat down in an armchair across from the sofa. Dean and Sam walked around the sofa and sat down, popping the tabs on the cans.

"So your grandfather, he was into all this supernatural stuff too?"

"Yeah," Dean said, swallowing a mouthful of beer. "Mom, Dad, grandparents, a truckload of cousins, whole family was lousy for it, but we –" He stopped, looking at the golem as it walked through the room. "Never had a golem."

"Right, yeah, we grew up in it," Sam continued. "But you didn't?"

Aaron leaned forward in the chair, rolling his eyes. "My Grandfather's adventures, the Initiative, the golem, the war – they were the stories they told me when I was a kid … I thought it was make-believe, so did my parents. You know, fantasies to help him cope with all of the horrible stuff he'd seen. He was in Vitsyebsk when they massacred eight thousand people, I mean … who could blame him, right?"

"But every once in a while, crazy old Grandpa Bass would come back from one of his trips, hand me a twenty-dollar savings bond and say … 'One day, you'll inherit the mantle'." Aaron stared at the cheap low table in front of him. "Sure enough, a few days after he dies, this big box shows up at my apartment."

He looked at Sam. "He always said I'd know what to do. Which … was crap, because when I opened that box this big, naked, potato-faced lunatic wakes up and goes crazy." Aaron pointed at the golem, his voice rising in pitch and volume as the memory of the moment flashed back in its entirety.

"This boy," growled the golem from the window. "Knows nothing, observes none of the mitzvahs, labours on Sabbath, dines on swine." It turned and walked to Aaron. "He's no rabbi. _Lheyvet hevreym_!"

"Don't start with that stuff again," Aaron said impatiently.

"_Lheyvet hevreym!_" The golem insisted, his voice louder.

"Enough! Please! Quiet time!"

The golem's eyes narrowed and he walked away.

"Alright, what was that? What was he saying?" Sam asked Aaron, leaning forward in the chair.

"It's Hebrew, for something like – take charge – but I have no idea what he means," Aaron shook his head frustratedly. "Look, I grew up in Short Hills, I cheated my way through Hebrew school, I never really listened to my grandfather or what he was saying."

"So, what? He just sends you this golem and expects you to work it out?" Dean asked, wondering if the rabbi really had been losing his marbles. Thing was like a tank, and it was obvious that it wasn't entirely under Aaron's control.

"He didn't get much of a chance to prepare me, I guess," Aaron said. "My parents, they did everything they could to prevent him from screwing me up with all his crazy talk. See after the war, my Grandfather spent the rest of his life trying to track down something he called the Thule Society."

Sam nodded. "The Thule Society were Nazis, but not much interested in the politics of the situation, only in the opportunities." He realised he'd left the copies of the files he'd made in the car.

"Nazi necromancers," Dean said musingly, the conversation in the bar returning to him.

"Necro-who?" Aaron looked from Dean to Sam.

"Necromancers," Sam said quickly. "Witches. Sorcerers. Dark magic, mostly with dead people?"

"Okay," Aaron nodded slowly. "The only things I could find out on the Thule was that they were this twisted secret fraternity hell-bent on world-domination that sponsored the early days of the Nazi party." He shook his head a little. "My grandfather said that the Judah Initiative was formed to fight them."

Sam was nodding. "That's the cover story and it's stood up for the most part." He got to his feet. "I've got the files in car, on both the Thule Society and the order's files on the Judah Initiative, you need to read them."

He turned and walked out of the living room, opening the front door and going to the car. The files were in his bag, lying on the back seat and as he opened the rear door of the car, he heard the scrape of shoes along the concrete sidewalk. He stopped, looking up, scanning the shadows that chequered the street, the house fronts to either side of Aaron's home. He couldn't see any movement. It might have been a branch, or something scraping against a fence or siding, he thought uneasily, leaning into the car to retrieve the bag. He didn't really it had been.

Returning to the house, he wondered what protection they could put up to keep the house safe – if any. Demon or angels, yeah, they had that down. Dark sorcerers and the ritual of necromancy, not so much. Another thing he needed to know, he thought, dragging in a deep breath.

"Here," he said, sitting down and dragging out the files. "This is the file we have on the Initiative." He passed it to Aaron and pulled out the second, thicker file. "And this is what the order has on the Thules."

"This is my Grandfather," Aaron said, lifting the photograph from the inside of the file. "I don't know any of the others, though."

"A lot of them were killed, in the war," Sam said. "What did your grandfather tell you about the Initiative?"

Aaron rubbed a hand over the bridge of his nose. "Ah … he said they formed in '41, after the massacre, to fight evil." He shook his head. "A lot of what he said was fragmentary, and it didn't make a lot of sense. He told me about raising the golem, when the bodies were being thrown into the river, and the survivors were singing Kaddish."

"Kaddish?" Dean looked at Sam, who lifted a shoulder.

"It's a Mourning Prayer," Aaron said. "For the souls of the dead."

"You should be saying Kaddish for Isaac! Your grandfather was murdered by the Thule," the golem emerged from the darkness of the other room suddenly, its face harsh. "Find them so I can do my work!"

"He's right," Aaron said softly, looking down at the file in his hands as the golem disappeared back into the shadows again. "My grandfather left a message on my machine, the day he died. And he said that he'd found something that the Thule were willing to kill him for. He said he was hiding it, in plain sight. He left me this – I don't know what it is, some kind of equation?" He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolding it and smoothing it out.

"It's not a phone number or an address or coordinates. QL-673W38?" He passed the paper to Dean.

"What is that? A combination?" Dean looked at it and passed it to Sam.

"No. It's call-number, for a book," he said, looking down at it. "It's the Library of Congress classification system. Q is Sciences … uh, QL ..." He stopped, looking up at Aaron. "Birds, I'm guessing. Let's go."

"Go?" Aaron said, brows rising.

"Go where?" Dean said at the same time.

"College library, he switched what he found with something else, and he hid the real thing in plain sight." Sam glanced back over his shoulder as he reached the door. "Come on."

* * *

Dean parked the Impala close to the doors, and turned off the engine, feeling the car lift several inches as the golem exited the rear door. He'd have to check the shocks on that side when they were done with this fucking job, he thought sourly.

He and Sam reached the glass doors and he pulled out his picks, slipping the wrench and pick into the simple lock and feeling his way through quickly. The lock clicked and he pulled the door open, Sam going in and looking in both directions.

Aaron walked in behind him. "So you two just break in wherever you go?"

Dean tucked the picks back into the soft leather wallet. "Yeah well, our dad wanted us to have a solid career to fall back on, just in case this 'hunter thing' didn't pan out."

Sam looked at the board on the wall next to the stairs. Sciences were on level two.

"Be right back," he said, running up the stairs. Behind him, Dean walked to the stairs and sat down, tucking the wallet into his jacket and Aaron and the golem stood and waited.

The stacks were well-spaced and the number for each shelf was at the end of the rows. Sam moved fast down the aisle, noting the ascending numbers as he passed them. QL – Zoology, he nodded to himself and turned into the narrow passage between the two rows of shelving. Five-fifty-four, six-twenty-nine, six-seventy-three. He stopped in Ornithology, and looked along the shelves. That certainly didn't belong there, he thought, seeing the edge of the ledger against the brightly coloured dust jackets of the modern books. Easing it out, he looked at it. It was an old-fashioned bookkeeper's ledger, thick and bound in red leather, the cover and corners blackened and charred a little. Opening it, he looked at the entries – some kind of number, identification perhaps, one or two paragraphs written longhand in German, dates, times. He closed the book and turned.

The sharp hiss was simultaneous with the bright, deep pain he felt in his neck, just under the jaw and his hand flew up to find a soft-feathered object embedded in his neck. Pulling it out, Sam realised he couldn't see it properly, his vision rippling suddenly. Poison, he thought, staggering back against the shelf behind him. Some kind of poison. He turned for the end of the stack and lurched out, feeling his muscles beginning to resist his control, as the darkness seemed to close around his field of vision.

"I owe you thanks." The accented voice belonged to a man who emerged from the end row of books, and Sam spun around, falling back against a shelf as he squinted at the man, light flashing from a pair of round glasses. "The rabbi led me this far, but you –"

Sam widened his eyes as the man approached him, something long and straight in his hands that he couldn't make out.

"…you took me all the way."

It was getting hard to breathe, hard to think and Sam tried to keep his eyes open, wide enough to at least see what was happening, what was around him. The return cart stood in the aisle between them. He couldn't see a weapon or anything he could conceivably use as a weapon, not falling-down-drugged against an opponent who was unimpaired.

"Now, give me the ledger!" the man said sharply, stepping forward. Sam straightened and kicked out, a clumsy forward kick that nevertheless managed to connect with the end of the cart, sending it hard into the other man.

He twisted around, almost falling without the support of the shelf and forced himself to run along the aisle, expecting to hear that soft hiss and feel the pain of another dart hitting him at any moment, reaching the stairs and stumbling down the first, barely able to see his brother or Aaron near the bottom.

"Ne-necromancer," he gasped out and stuttered down the next few steps, collapsing on the wide landing half-way down.

Dean was on his feet, his gun in his hand as he ran up the steps and dropped to one knee next to his brother. Sam's face had whitened, and spreading down his neck and up over his jaw, a darkly purple bruising grew as he watched it.

"Crap."

Behind him he heard a hiss and Aaron's cry as a dart struck the younger man in the abdomen, the black feather fletching standing out against the grey sweater. Dean watched Aaron drop to the floor beside the golem.

"CRAP!" He turned to look back up the stairs, acutely aware that he was lit up clearly in the lighting overhead and the upper level was mostly in shadow. He looked back down the stairs at the golem. "Hey! They're both gonna die unless we get whoever cast that spell!"

The golem walked toward the stairs, going up them with the same unhurried pace he'd used in the house, the length of stride taking the stairs three at a time without effort. Dean watched him for a moment, debating with himself. Stay or go with him? He looked down at Sam, back at Aaron. Both were helpless. He lifted his head as he heard the golem thumping along the second level. And it was damned near indestructible.

"Come on," he said to his brother, lifting Sam up, getting his shoulder under an arm and half-carrying, half-dragging Sam down the stairs to the ground level. He turned Sam's head, his mouth tightening as he saw the bruising ripple outward further, darkening in the centre as it went.

He turned to Aaron and pulled the dart from him, throwing it away. He didn't want to look at those same dark patterns spreading out over Aaron's skin. Were they penetrating deeper than the skin? Rotting the tissue and organs underneath?

_Jesus_, he thought, sucking in a deep breath, _don't go there_. From the second level he heard a banging, something on metal, going on and on, and he shifted between his brother and Aaron, moving past them to the foot of the stairs, the Colt aimed at chest level above the top step. The barrel twitched right as he heard a dragging sound, then the golem came into the light, massive fist holding the collar of a man, dragging him along behind.

The golem came down the stairs and Dean watched as the body he pulled bounced off every step. At the landing, it stopped; lifting and throwing the body down and the man in the black suit lifted his head slightly, turning to look down the stairs at Dean, blood dripping from a wide wound in the side of his head, from his mouth.

"Long live the Thules," the man said slowly. Dean's finger tightened against the trigger when the golem reached down and curled its hand around the man's collar, lifting the upper torso from the floor. The other hand stretched out and gripped the man's head, twisting it sharply to one side, the crack of the bone loud and distinct in the quiet library.

"Or not," Dean said prosaically. He slid his finger from the trigger, his thumb finding the safety automatically as he tucked the gun back into the waist band of his jeans. He looked at Sam, who was moving his head slowly, the livid bruising disappearing, his brother's eyes squeezing shut as he came back to consciousness.

"You okay?" He crouched down beside Sam. Sam looked at him blearily.

"Can't see too good," he muttered, wincing as he turned his head to one side.

"Thule dude poisoned you," Dean said, glancing over his shoulder. "And Aaron. You both need some rest."

"No argument," Sam said, putting his hand on the ground and trying to get up. He wobbled for a moment and fell back. "Might not be that fast."

Dean nodded, ducking his head as he dragged Sam's around his shoulders, and lifted. He looked at the golem.

"Can you take him?"

The golem nodded, walking down the stairs and picking up Aaron as lightly and easily as if he'd been a child. Feeling Sam's weight over his shoulders, Dean shifted his brother's position a little more and hooked his arm around Sam's ribs, staggering after them.

* * *

Getting Aaron into one bedroom and Sam into the other, Dean looked at the small puncture wound that was all that remained of the magician's poison. What the hell had it been? Not a straight poison, that would've remained when the man died. Something he controlled? A spell that was somehow able to be activated by contact with the victim? He shook his head tiredly. He'd never seen anything like that. Never even heard of it. He wondered if there would be a reference to a spell like that in the library of the order.

He walked out of the bedroom and closed the doors, looking longingly at the sofa, but turning to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee instead. They'd been behind every step of the way on this case. Staying that way was going to get them killed.

Carrying the cup of hot black coffee to the living room, he pulled the order's file on the Thule Society across the table and opened it.

* * *

_**Next morning.**_

Sam rubbed his jaw gingerly as he walked into the kitchen. Dean looked up at him from the table and got up, pulling out a chair on his way to the coffee pot and pouring Sam a cup.

Taking it gratefully, Sam sipped the coffee and looked at his brother's face, belatedly noting the shadows under his eyes. "You didn't sleep?"

"Did some reading instead," Dean admitted, pouring himself another cup. "Nearly all the hard-core members of the society got away at the end of the war."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, it was one of the things the Initiative was still involved with, tracking them down."

"Well they're not that hard to find," Dean said, returning to the table and sitting down. "But they're fucking hard to touch."

"What do you mean?"

Dean turned the laptop screen toward him, and opened the file. A pile of photographs, mostly grainy black and white, sat on the top of the pages. "Check out the top one."

Sam put down his cup and picked up the photograph. "What am I looking for?"

"Dietrich Eckart, third from the end, back row," Dean said, tapping the edge of the laptop's screen. "And here he is today."

Sam shifted his gaze from the cold-eyed, dark-haired man in the photograph to the media photo in the article. It was the same man. And he hadn't aged a day. The heading of the article was even more ominous. "Strasburg Business Tycoon Donates Twenty Million to Charity". The picture showed Eckart smiling as he shook the hand of a smartly-dressed and coiffed woman in front of an orphanage.

"Guess that Hitler was just the jumping off point?" He looked over the screen at his brother. Dean nodded.

"Looks like." He flipped through file, stopping as he came to the later section. "Eckart was one of seven men who were never publicly members of the Thules. They were careful to keep their hands clean, and they weren't even questioned after the war – no fleeing to South America or Africa, just business as usual."

"How come no one noticed that he hasn't aged?" Sam frowned at the photograph.

"Oh, that's Dietrich Eckart, Junior," Dean said, his lip curling up. "Full paperwork, so far as I can find out. He'll no doubt get married in a year or two and pull the same trick again."

"What about the others?"

"Got a Rosenberg in France, a Karl Harrer in South Africa, Julius Lehmann in London, Hans Frank living in our own New York City, Karl Haushofer in Italy and Gottfried Feder in Morocco," Dean confirmed.

"Frank and Rosenberg were tried at Nuremberg, and put to death," Sam contradicted, running a hand through his hair as he dragged back the few details he remembered of the trials that had been a part of his pre-law course at Stanford.

"Not them. Someone who looked and sounded like them but not them," Dean said. "Same with Eckart, supposed to have died in '23. And a couple of the others, supposed to have committed suicide." He leaned across the table, flipping through the pages of the file. "There were bodies. There were walking and talking Xerox copies of those men, but it wasn't them."

"Crap."

"Yeah." Dean leaned back in his chair, eyes hooded as he looked at the file. "Like fucking Roman all over again."

"This is …" Sam trailed off unwillingly, looking at Dean.

"Out of our league?"

He nodded.

"Maybe. Maybe not. They're human, Sam, sort of," Dean said softly. "Regular bullet will do the job."

"How do we find them? Get close to them? Without them seeing us coming a mile off?"

"Yeah, well, that's what we have to figure out," Dean agreed, straightening up in the chair and stretching his back. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. It was stiff and sore but just bruised, not sprained or cracked. "Speaking of figuring out, that book you rescued is all in another language."

"German, yeah," Sam said, finishing his coffee. "We need a translator."

"Lucky for us we're in a college town," Dean said, getting up.

* * *

_**Language Lab, East Building.**_

Dean looked at the woman sitting on the other side of the table. He had no idea how Sam'd found her, but he approved. In her late twenties, Clarissa Montrose had smooth, creamy skin, wide, grey eyes and long, coffee-brown hair that hung in curls and waves down over her shoulders.

"You need this translated?" she was asking Sam, and her voice was warm and expressive, low for a woman, with a very faint lilt to it, suggesting that English wasn't her first language.

"Yeah, at least some of it." Sam pushed the ledger across the table to her, and glanced at his brother. Dean's gaze was locked onto her face and he suppressed a smile.

She opened the book and looked down the columns, and they both saw her face pale slightly as she took in the first entry.

"What?"

"This –" She looked up at him, her eyes wide, her throat working as she swallowed. "This is disgusting."

"What's it say?" Dean leaned forward across the table.

Looking back down at the entry, Clarissa read the entry aloud, her voice thick and her face tight. "The merchandise has been delivered to Šumilina. Three hundred in total, one hundred males, eighty females, one hundred and twenty issue. Preliminary experimentation in stimulation tolerance will begin as soon as the processing is complete."

She closed her eyes and the book, sitting still for a long moment. Dean looked at her and then at his brother as he replayed the words in his head. Merchandise. Issue. Stimulation tolerance. When the meanings sank in, he swallowed.

"This is a record of what they were doing?" He looked at Sam.

"Looks like," Sam agreed quietly. "No wonder they killed Bass for it."

Clarissa's eyes snapped open and she stared at him. "I cannot do this."

"No, I – we – understand. We don't need any more detail," Sam said quickly, watching her get up and gather her coat and purse.

Dean sighed. He'd been going to ask her out, get a drink, something to eat … etcetera, but he had the feeling that possibility was out of the question now. Typical.

"Alright, this is hot stuff, and we can't ask just anyone to translate it for us," he said to Sam, getting to his feet.

Sam picked up the ledger and nodded. "Give Garth a call?"

Dean shrugged. The man might know of someone who spoke German and could be trusted to keep what was written a secret. He felt a prickle along the nerves of his neck and increased his stride.

"We should get back to Aaron, he's probably a target too by now."

* * *

_**Isaac Bass' House.**_

Aaron was still sleeping when they came into the house, the golem prowling the rooms ceaselessly, slowing to look at them carefully, then moving on.

"How do we find them?" Sam said, dropping the ledger on the table as he pulled the laptop from his bag.

"No clue," Dean said, walking to the fridge and pulling out a couple of cans. "The other thing is what do we do about the man-monster in there?"

Sam looked at the doorway. "There's plenty of lore on them."

"Well, I get the feeling that Aaron's control over it is not that strong," Dean said, popping both tabs and setting one can beside his brother. "And if it decides to go solo, we need a way to put it down."

Nodding, Sam opened the laptop, typing in the query. He got over a million hits and sighed as he clicked on the first. Dean dialled Garth's number and wandered into the living room to talk to him.

"Garth, hey. Yeah, need some help. You know any hunters who speak fluent German?"

He looked at Sam as he came back in a minute later. His brother was resting his head on one hand as he wrote with the other.

"Anything?"

"Nothing solid," Sam said. "I mean … the lore is all over the place. According to one legend, it can be shut down if you erase one of the letters off its forehead." He looked up at Dean expectantly.

"I didn't see any letters on clay-face," Dean frowned.

"Exactly," Sam said, looking back at his notes. "So, sidebar that. Another one, uh, some have a scroll in their mouths which you're supposed to rip out."

"Wouldn't that give him some sort of lisp or something?" Dean reasoned tiredly.

Sam snorted. "Classically they're even supposed to speak. We do know that he took on an entire camp full of heavily armed German soldiers and Thule necromancers … and won."

"One badass humble figurine," Dean said, looking at the floor.

"That we have no idea how to put back in the box," Sam confirmed.

"Great."

"So that's your plan?" Aaron said from the living room doorway. "Taking out my golem?"

He walked toward the kitchen, and both Dean and Sam shifted defensively.

"It's not a plan," Sam said carefully from the kitchen.

"We would just feel a lot better if we knew how, that's all," Dean added, looking at Aaron.

"What makes you think you have any right to make that decision?" Aaron looked at them.

Dean blinked. "Believe me, if we need the right – we will take it," he said distinctly.

"Look, he may be a pain in the ass, but he's my responsibility," Aaron said, holding his ground.

"Aaron, the golem was built to go to war," Sam said. "You're not trained for that. How're you going to take that on?"

Dean watched Aaron absorb that.

"I don't know."

"There are some weapons that you can't keep idle," he said quietly to the man in front of him. "You either shut them down, or you have to use them, in the way they're supposed to be used."

Aaron's gaze dropped away and Dean saw the choice register in his face. Turning away, now, going back to the life he'd lived before his grandfather had died. Or taking the other path, to a life that was going to be hard, and brutal and might get him killed. That would be lonely and filled with pain … and that would mean something.

The front door exploded back on its hinges, splinters flying out from around the lock and Dean shoved Aaron back against the wall as a dark-suited man burst into the hallway. He reached for the shotgun in the gear bag as Sam grabbed the ledger, pushing it under his satchel next to the wall.

The man facing Dean gripped the end of the barrel, yanking it forward slightly as he swung a fist into Dean's face, sending him flying backwards. Sam jumped up, hitting a second man then freezing as the Uzi machine pistol barrel centred on his chest. One took a fistful of Aaron's shirt, dragging him up the wall and holding him pinned there.

There was a low growl from the hall and Dean looked around. It increased in volume as the golem came into the room, striding to the man holding Aaron and grabbing him, arms tightly wrapped around his chest, his tongue forced out as he was lifted from the floor and squeezed.

"Enough!"

The command cracked through the room and the golem stopped, dropping the man he held to the floor as he turned to face the sorcerer who'd managed to escape him the last time.

"There you are, a grim piece of work, after all these years."

"Eckart," the golem breathed as he stared at the man by the front door. He began to walk toward him, stride lengthening and speed increasing as he got closer.

"_Hevmer shel adem lhesgeyr at bevned ley_," Eckart said, his voice deep and measured, raising his hand to the golem.

The golem stopped at the doorway, shoulders dropping as the animation died out of it. Aaron stared at the still figure in disbelief as Eckart walked past it, patting it gently on one shoulder.

Dean looked up at the SMG pointed at him, a flicked glance to one side showing his Colt under the folds of his coat, lying on the floor less than a foot away. Sam was moved from the kitchen to the doorway, and each of the gunmen had a single target.

Eckart looked around and walked back to the golem, standing in front of it.

"By the Covenant of your makers, Clay of Adam, surrender your bond unto me," he said softly, and lifted his hand, holding it under the golem's mouth. Its jaw dropped open and the small scroll fell out, into Eckart's open palm.

Eckart turned away, looking up at Aaron as he untied the scroll. "So you are the golem's rabbi?"

The black-suited gunman pushed Aaron across the room to Eckart, holding him by the back of his clothes as Eckart unrolled the scroll and read the names it held.

"You woke him, but you didn't take possession of him," he said contemptuously, looking at the young man's wide eyes, watching Aaron's gaze dip to the scroll in his hand.

He smiled. "You write your name on this scroll, boy," he explained. "That's how you _lheyvet hevreym_."

"I didn't know what he meant," Aaron said, his gaze cutting back to the scroll.

"Knowledge is power," Eckart said slowly. "Isn't it?"

He swung his arm, the back of his hand hitting Aaron and knocking him into the corner.

The three men moved around, covering Dean and Sam as Eckart settled himself in an armchair. "Now, which of you is going to tell me where I can find a certain red ledger?"

The bald gunman moved around the rooms, looking for it. Sam lifted his head.

"How 'bout you screw yourself?"

"Ah, gentlemen," Eckart said, drawing his gloves off slowly. "Is there a need for conflict and ill mannered remarks?"

"No, it's a necessity," Dean said. "We don't play well with witches."

"Oh we are more than just witches, hunter," Eckart said, leaning forward. "That's what you are, isn't it? A hunter of shadows?"

"And you're the Commandant," Sam said coldly. "The one who authorised all those experiments."

"Invented, if you don't mind," Eckart corrected him. "Many, many spells require living subjects, as I'm sure you know."

Dean looked at Aaron. The shotgun was three feet from him, behind the men who were covering them. Aaron shook his head a little, his eyes widening in fear.

"Not exactly much for loyalty, are you?" Sam said, looking at him. "One minute you're tight as ticks with the Nazis, the next you never heard of them."

"Loyalty is a much-overrated commodity," Eckart said with a casual shrug. "It requires trust and respect, whereas fear is an easier tool to use."

"And what about you?" Sam asked. "You're not … undead? You cast a little Forever-Twenty-One spell on yourself, like your little friend at the library?"

Eckart's eyes narrowed slightly. "His name was Torvald. And you will suffer for that."

The bald-headed man moved next to Sam, lifting the satchel and pulling the ledger from beneath it. Sam's head turned slightly and his mouth thinned. The gunman walked back to Eckart, holding it out.

"I gotta say, spell or no spell, he broke easy," Dean said conversationally, feeling his brother moving slightly further away from him, seeing Aaron looking at the heavy timber legs of the smashed cupboard beside him. If he did it, if he found the courage to move, that would be their chance.

Eckart took the ledger reverently, opening the cover and reading the first page of the entries. Closing the book, he looked at Dean with a smile. Dean kept his gaze fixed on Eckart, seeing Aaron's hand curling around the long, thick piece of timber from the corner of his eye.

"Let me tell you what I see – a magic Jew at my feet, not a master in sight, our sacred secrets safe once again." He got to his feet, looking down at them. "We are more powerful than you can imagine, and this is our time. Unfortunately for you, we will not meet again."

Aaron gripped the timber tight and sprang to his feet, swinging it wildly at head height, the words of his grade school baseball coach shouting in his mind to keep his elbow level and the reverberation of the blow as it hit the man's skull travelling up his arm just as the coach said it would on a sweet spot.

Dean rolled instantly, his fingers curling around the Colt's grip and he was lying on his back, not bothering to free the gun, just firing through the army coat at the man in front of him. Sam had rolled the other way, grabbing the Taurus from the satchel and shooting, his bullet hitting the other gunman a fraction of a second after Dean's target went down. They got to their feet, guns trained on the bald man as he dragged Aaron in front of him to the doorway, releasing him and running when he was out of their view.

Eckart rose from the floor unsteadily, his hand pressed against the back of his head, his gaze cutting around the room. "Fools!"

"Guessing you're rethinking the value of loyalty right about now," Dean said mockingly. "Sucks when things change so fast, right?"

Eckart lifted his gaze, staring at him. "You can kill me, but you will never kill all the Thule."

Dean's finger tightened smoothly on the trigger, pulling gently past the point of resistance. The two guns fired at the same time, both bullets punching through Eckart's head and the window behind him. He dropped to the chair, the ledger falling to the carpet with a thump.

Lowering the gun, Dean looked at the body. "Well, that's a start."

"You okay?" He looked at Aaron who was still standing beside the golem. Aaron nodded.

"Yeah," he breathed, glancing back at the slack face of the golem. "Yeah."

Sam looked at the bodies. "Got some cleaning up to do here."

* * *

_**Four hours later.**_

Aaron unlocked the door, walking inside, his body aching from the digging, his feelings numb from the events of the day, but his mind sharp and clear and his decision already made.

"Well, now we know," Dean said, walking past the golem into the living room. "Paper beats golem, fire beats undead, Nazi zombie freaks."

Sam looked from the golem to the man standing beside him. "So? What do you say, Aaron? I mean, we got a place where we can keep him."

Reaching into his pocket, Aaron pulled the scroll out. "No. I mean … Eckart might be dead, but you heard him. The Thule are still out there … hidden. Active."

He looked down as his fingers unrolled the cloth, stopping when he saw the last name on the list. "That was my grandfather."

Holding the scroll, he reached into his pocket again, drawing out a pen. "He left me something important. Something only I can do."

Aaron wrote his name in Hebrew, under his grandfather's, rolling the scroll up tightly and tying the string around it again.

"_Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba_," he spoke the words of the Kaddish, almost under his breath.

Walking to the golem he put the scroll inside the creature's mouth and the great jaw closed again. Aaron watched as it straightened up, turning slowly to him.

"_B'al'ma di v'ra khir'utei_."

"Looks like I'm the Judah Initiative now," he said softly to the golem.

"_Lheyvet hevreym_," the golem returned gently.

Aaron looked at him, confusion filling his face. "But … I thought I did."

"Yes," the golem said, bowing its head to him.

"_V'yam'likh mal'khutei b'chayeikhon uv'yomeikhon_."

* * *

"Keep the files, they're copies, not the originals," Sam said, stacking them on the kitchen table. "I – we haven't been through all the documents in the library yet, but if we find any that relate to the Thule or to the Initiative, I'll send them to Yavoklevich. Keep in touch with him."

Aaron looked at him, nodding. "I'm insane, right, to be doing this?"

Dean tipped his head back, looking at the ceiling. "Yep."

"But it's important," Aaron said, looking at him. Dean closed his eyes.

"Yep."

"And someone has to do it," Aaron pressed him.

"Yeah."

"My grandfather … I did him a great injustice, you know." He looked down at the table, at the files and the signet ring of the late Eckart. "He was something I'd never seen before, something I'd never thought about before. But when I was a kid, I knew it, knew it so deeply it never needed to be said aloud."

Sam's brow creased up slightly. "Knew what?"

"Knew he was a hero," Aaron said simply, turning away from them. "He told me, he said it over and over and it never, ever sunk in until that man was standing here, ready to kill us all just because we were in the way, because we'd seen his filthy secrets …" He drew in a deep breath and turned back to them, his eyes a little too bright, his jaw muscle twitching faintly.

"He said … he told me … 'all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.' I know that's a quote from someone else, Burke or Tolstoy or whoever. But it was the touchstone of his life, and now, mine too."

Sam flicked a look at Dean. His brother was looking at the floor.

"Ours as well, I guess," Sam said, looking back at Aaron. "You're not on your own, anyway."

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam walked down the stairs and along the hallway, knowing where Dean would be. He'd added the copy of the Thule ledger to the file, along with the translation they'd gotten from a friend of Garth's. He'd read a little of that translation, putting it down when he realised that he was getting angry with no way to get vengeance or any satisfaction from what had been done. If Aaron needed help, they would help, he thought. But they had another job to do first.

In the store-room, Dean was walking slowly along the shelves, reading label by label, looking down at the list he held in his hand. Sam glanced at the table in the centre of the room, already stacked with boxes.

"We got everything?"

Dean looked around, shaking his head. "No, I think we're gonna be missing a couple of things, but if Cas ever shows up again, he can get them."

Sam leaned against the table. "You alright with this?"

His brother turned slowly and looked at him. "You mean – this? Being here, being a part of this?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"I'm not sure," Dean said honestly. "It's a hell of a base, you know, everything we need …"

"But?"

"Yeah." He leaned back against the shelf, trying to find the words to describe the sense that they weren't as free anymore. The trouble was it was a dream to imagine that they'd ever been free. And Sam would certainly argue that case.

"I don't know what it is," he finally admitted. "Something in me, something that doesn't feel comfortable being –"

"Caged?" Sam offered, watching Dean's brows rise slightly.

"I feel it too, Dean," Sam said quietly. "Maybe it's what was planned for us … but what bothers me is by who? For what purpose?"

"So … we use what we need, maybe don't get too caught up in all?" Dean suggested, not really knowing what else to suggest.

"I don't think it'll work that way," Sam said, chewing on the corner of his lip as he thought about it. "But I don't know what way it will work." He folded his arms over his chest, looking at the floor. "All I know is that Aaron was right. We can't do nothing and let it go by – I can't be a pure scholar the way Henry was or wanted to be, just observing and recording events and not doing something about them."

Dean's mouth quirked a little. "Henry was pretty keen to get in on the action when it came looking for him."

"Maybe," Sam allowed. "I just know that I can't. I like this place. I like the fact that we might have the answers, the resources to really help. But I have to fight too."

"Yeah, well, it's not like I'm planning to go strictly solo any time soon," Dean said lightly, relief that his brother wasn't planning on turning one hundred percent bookworm filling him.

"You just about done in here?" Sam straightened up, looking around.

"Yeah, couple more shelves."

"I'll see you up there."

Dean nodded, looking down at the list. Three things for the bombs that the store-room didn't seem to have in stock but he was pretty sure Cas could get. If the angel ever came back.

He was a little surprised at Sam's decision. He'd thought that being here, ferreting out the answers and solving the problems would be his brother's idea of heaven. He thought that there'd be times when he could hunt solo, if need be. But there would always be times when he'd need Sam, need someone to put his back against when he faced the darkness. He wondered absently if Sam felt that too. He hoped so.

Looking along the last couple of shelves, he found another box, sea serpent scales, and pulled it off the shelf and put it on the table, tucking the list under it. He walked to the door and flipped off the light, closing the door behind him.

_All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing._ Sam had felt the resonance in the words. He had as well. It was hard to walk away from, that idea, once it had rooted in the mind and heart and soul.

Had he done nothing? Down there? _Actus me invito factus non est meus actus_. The act done by me, against my will, is not my act. Sam had tried to convince him with that one. But it had never been about what he'd done. He understood that. It was then, now and forever about what he'd felt. And the creeping belief that in those feelings, in the midst of the screams that still echoed through his mind in the deep watches of the night, in the remembered scents and tastes and tactile memories …he'd damned himself.


	28. Chapter 28 There Can Be Only One

**Chapter 28 There Can Be Only One**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

_I carved you into a new animal, the demon whispered against his ear and he jerked away, brought up short by the manacles that bit into his wrists and ankles, feeling the fresh spurts of blood that slicked his skin and the deep, raw abrasions that stung viciously in the sulphurous air._

_Something sliding and writhing inside of him, worming in and out of his guts, through the tears in his flesh, pressing against his mind and leaving a slime trail of acid over his soul. When he picked up the razor or the knife, those freshnets of pain filled him, blindingly bright for a second before they faded away and the pain disappeared, leaving a vacuum, an empty, howling wasteland of nothingness in its place. For the time that he held the tools and worked upon the damned, the pain was absent and it's absence was almost the same as pleasure._

_He learned to tune out the screams and shrieks and the awful, bubbling noises that they made as he cut and probed and broke and tore. He learned to look at the few square inches of flesh that he worked on, oblivious to the whole. He learned to see the way that pain – endless, monstrous pain – could break the mind, twist the soul, until the mind yielded, white turned to black, day to night and the path to becoming a demon was formed. Every day he felt through himself, searched for that path, obsessively, compulsively, looking for the blackness. Every single day he'd become more and more certain that it was there, hiding, just out of sight, but there, waiting._

_The wall he cowered behind, the wall that he'd withdrawn behind when the pain was everywhere and he couldn't stand it any longer, was crumbling, parts falling away as agony and desolation and despair washed over and through it. In time, he knew, it would be destroyed completely, and he would have had no place to run to, nowhere to hide. It was his childhood, that wall. His father. His mother. His brother. The fixed and unyielding knowledge that whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice needed, evil had to be wiped out, had to be eradicated. It was the principles of life he'd learned from the age of four, and the morality and responsibility that had been inculcated into him over his lifetime, drilled into his blood and bone and heart and mind. Courage in the face of the enemy. Loyalty to his blood and to his friends. Fortitude to withstand what had to be withstood. Honour above all else. It was the fear that he wasn't strong enough. It was the guilt that he had to do more. It was the caring that he hid from, pretended not to feel, pretended was not a part of him._

_It wouldn't last forever, he knew. But it hadn't had to. He'd been pulled from the pit and given a second chance._

_Dirt in his mouth, the pressure around and over him of the earth and the box and his blood and heartbeat thundering in his ears as he'd realised where he was. Buried. Alive._

Dean moaned and rolled over in the bed, his arm swinging out and hitting the nightstand, the crack of his knuckles against the wood bringing him out of the dream. He leaned on one elbow for a moment, running a hand through damp hair, his breath ragged in his throat, then he sat up, throwing the covers back and looking blankly around the room.

It looked like a hotel room, he thought sourly. Like a transient fucking hotel or motel room that he'd be in for a night or two and then gone. He was so goddamned sick of being on the road, on the run, living out of a grease-coated, gun-oil stained, solvent-smelling canvas duffle.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he dropped his head into his hands. _How certain are you that what you brought back, is a hundred percent pure Sam? You of all people should know, that's what's dead, should stay dead._ Yellow Eye's voice echoed through his head.

No. _No._ Sam … what had happened to Sam … he'd been lost. That's all. Lost and the only lifeline he'd had had been Ruby. And it'd been his fault that Sam got lost, lost in grief and loneliness and not knowing what to do next.

If he hadn't made the deal, Sam would be dead.

There was no answer to that riddle, he knew. He'd gone over and over and over it, a thousand times, a million times. He'd failed to keep Sam alive, and he'd failed when he'd left his brother alone. Double-whammy. And the house wins. The house always wins.

Purgatory had brought it all back. The clean black and white simplicity of it. Kill or be killed. No questions. No answers. Just can you do it, or not? He'd done it. And he'd felt no remorse, no wondering about evil or good. Just see the monster and kill it. Until Benny, at least.

His throat contracted sharply at the ambushing thought of the vampire. The last thing he'd ever thought of was a friendship with a monster. By the time they'd gotten out, he'd realised that of the two of them, he was a lot more monster than the vampire was. But by then he no longer cared. He thought he'd no longer cared.

_You're white-knuckling it living like this. Like what you are is some bad, awful thing. But you're not._

She'd been wrong about that, he thought, fingers pressing hard against his temples as if he could force the thoughts back, force them away. He was a killer. And he'd failed them as surely as he'd failed his father, his brother. Brought danger and near-death and pain to them just by being there, just by being himself. He couldn't protect anyone. He could do one thing. He could put himself in the way of evil, he could sign up for the suicide missions, and if he died … well, if he died, it wouldn't really matter, would it?

Dean got up abruptly, jacknifing to his feet and walking fast to the door. He could do that, he thought, as he turned down the hall to the bathroom. He could do that.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

Kevin stared at the tablet, barely conscious of his hand moving over the paper, writing what he saw in his mind, the pen's scratchings underlying the beat of the blood pounding in his head. Sometimes, he could almost see it, almost see the patterns forming and reforming in the place where he was not a man, not a human, but a living conduit to a deeper understanding, to an entity that mankind had no real idea of but had built a long-lasting delusion around.

Fear. Do. Danger. The notes were spread across the table and he hit the block suddenly, the words vanishing and his hand stopping, and pain and hunger and exhaustion returning to him like faithful dogs, swallowing him up in a sea of messages from his nervous system.

Getting up, he crossed to the microwave. He opened the door and stared at the bowl sitting inside, three greenish-looking hot dogs, with wrinkled, puckered skin, lying there. When had he put those in, he wondered vaguely. It didn't matter. He took the bowl out and threw it in the sink, barely noticing the crash of the china as it hit another bowl already sitting there.

In the fridge, the open packet of hot dogs was still on the shelf and he pulled three more out, putting them in a bowl and setting it inside the appliance and pressing the buttons. His head was pounding but he needed food before he could take anything for the pain. Needed food in his stomach before his body began to eat itself in desperation. He seemed to last a couple of days then the block would appear and he'd come back to himself, enough to eat something, to take another couple of aspirin, to lie down on the tangled and damp covers of the bed for an indeterminate period of time before the block disappeared and the symbols began to flow.

Walking back to the desk, he picked up the last page he'd written and carried it to the noticeboard on the wall, pinning it up along with the others. Fragments. Just fragments that meant nothing, had no connection to each other, no matching edges or concepts or … or anything. The microwave beeped and he turned away, going to get the bowl and almost dropping it as the hot ceramic burned his fingers. The dogs were hot too, but he was past caring, stuffing them into his mouth as it filled with saliva, barely chewing them before he swallowed, his tongue and throat burning uncomfortably.

There was an inch of acrid coffee in the bottom of the pot and he picked it up when the dogs were gone, pouring it into a cup and refilling the pot absently. He opened the bottle of aspirin and swallowed three more tablets, washing them down with the bitter, black liquid. Some part of him knew that it wasn't … smart … to take the tablets like this. They had other effects as well as the diminishing of the pain receptors. Effects that could be dangerous to him, in this half-trance that he lapsed in and out of. But he couldn't focus his thoughts enough to worry about it now.

He fell face down on the bed, his eyes closing before his head hit the pillow, darkness swallowing him whole.

When he woke, the headache was still there. He pushed himself upright, not noticing the dime-sized drop of red on the pillow where his head had lain. The block was gone again and he walked straight to the table, sitting down and picking up the tablet, the disorienting shift into the part of him that was not a man, was not a human, was only a conduit, rippling through his hands and through his eyes and he picked up the pen and started writing.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam closed the book slowly and looked at his watch. Three-fifteen. He picked up the cup beside him, looking into it. Empty. Sighing, he got up and carried the cup to the kitchen, setting it beside the coffee maker, taking the glass jug and rinsing it out, refilling it, his actions automatic, his thoughts on what he'd been reading.

The order's archives on Hell, on the demons and their hierarchies, on the Fallen and their histories, numbered somewhere in the low thousands. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for so he was reading all of them, one by one. Plodding through them because he couldn't do anything else.

Somewhere, in between the time he'd stopped seeing, stopped hearing Dean's voice, darkness overtaking him and carrying him down … somewhere, and the moment in which he'd seen the light die out of his brother's eyes, something had changed. In him. He'd felt it growing, he thought, but it had been overlaid with everything else, with his escalating fear and despair that he couldn't find the answers to save Dean. That he couldn't feel so much, that he had to be stronger, harder, more like his brother or he'd never survive. That everything they'd tried had failed. That more and more hunters were looking for him, and Dean knew it, tried to ignore it, tried to pretend that wasn't happening. That his brother wanted to die, but was pretending that dying was all that would happen to him. Pretending that he wouldn't be spending eternity in Hell and becoming something else.

Something had changed and he couldn't find what it was.

He remembered standing over Jake, in the cemetery in Wyoming, and pulling the Taurus' trigger over and over. He'd already had his suspicions of what Dean had done. Of what had happened to him. Just suspicions but already fuelling an agony of anger. He remembered killing Gordon, that anger stronger, far stronger by then, strong enough to sever the vampire's head from his neck with a piece of wire when it had exploded out of him. He remembered the fury growing, pushing at him, burning through alcohol and drugs and exhaustion as if they didn't exist. He remembered the dreams he'd had, after Dean had gone. Dreams of desolation and destruction, of ash and blood and bleached white bones covering a landscape that would never see a shade of green again.

The coffee burbled as it dripped steadily into the jug and he closed his eyes. Had that fury been there before? Or had it come after he'd died? None of the books he'd read had given him any answers.

This place, this job, was a sanctuary, of sorts. He'd told Dean that he couldn't be a pure scholar, couldn't sit safe and secure behind illusions and doors of steel and stone and let others fight on his behalf. That'd been true. He couldn't. But he liked the feel of this, of searching through the footnotes and references, of tracking the information like he would track a monster, following the clues and hints and spoor of his prey through the words and thoughts and facts of the men who'd gone before him. He thought that one day, perhaps when they'd closed the gates and vanquished the worst evil of the world, he would return to the peace and the mental hunt, and follow the patterns and the knowledge deeper, lose himself in it.

He couldn't do that until he knew, though. Knew what had changed and why and how to change it back. Knew if it was a part of him or something alien. Knew if it could cleansed from him, acknowledged, forgiven and atoned for, or if in some way it had become a part of him, welded onto his soul, something he would have to live with.

The pot quietened and he looked at it, lifting the full jug out and filling his cup. He carried the cup back to the library and sat down at the table, setting it to one side as he lifted the closed book to the pile in front of him and pulled the next book down, opening the cover and starting to read again.

* * *

Sam looked up, hearing a hammering noise from upstairs. It stopped and he looked back down at the book in front of him. The hammering started up again and he ran a hand through his hair, pushing the book aside and tilting his head to listen. After a moment, it stopped again.

He rubbed his fingertips over his brows, vague memories of his brother walking past him several times returning to him. He couldn't think what Dean was doing.

A glance into the cup beside him showed it empty, again. Getting up, he carried it down to the kitchen. The pot was also empty, again.

Another four books. Another zero. He fought for a moment against the feelings of frustration that were circling inside and told himself that this was just going to take some time. He couldn't do anything to find the answers any more quickly than what he was doing.

Turning away from the freshly filled and brewing coffee, he walked to the stairs and headed up. Dean had taken the room closest to the other end of the corridor and Sam stopped at the doorway, looking around the room in surprise.

The framed pictures, the order's bullion-stitched bedspread, all the items that had made the room identical to the others had gone. On the walls, weapons had been hung on simple pegs, guns and the stone axe from Purgatory above the bed, a selection of variously sized blades above the desk. From somewhere, Dean had found a turntable and his small collection of records, hoarded and kept upright through the years, sat next to it. On the desk, a desk lamp through a warm spill of light over the new, closed laptop, sitting on a blotter with a collection of notebooks and pens. By the window, an armchair sat in another pool of light, the curving floor lamp standing behind it.

Sam looked around, brow crinkled up. "What brought this on?"

Dean turned around and shrugged slightly. "I … I woke up and it looked like a hotel room."

Sam saw the small photograph of Mary and Dean, leaning against the lamp on the desk. _I want Dean to have a home_. His father's words filled his mind for a moment and he closed his eyes briefly.

"It looks good."

Dean nodded, looking around self-consciously; suddenly aware of how much of himself was on display around the room. "It smells good," he said. "Clean. No funky motel stains …"

One of the knives hanging on the wall beside the stone axe caught Sam's eye. He walked over to it, his fingers reaching out to follow the sharply curved, semi-circular blade. The hilt and blade were heavily engraved and the knife had a sensuous beauty, belying its deadly purpose.

"I haven't seen this for years."

Dean looked at it. "I found it with your stuff … after you … when you put Lucifer in the Cage," he said uncomfortably. "Dad always said it was the best knife for taking down most things."

Sam nodded, remembering. The knife was Persian, very old. The half-moon cutting edge had made decapitation a breeze, even when he'd been younger and not as strong as his father or brother. His mouth lifted in a half-smile and he turned back to his brother, looking around the room again.

"I like it," Sam said.

Dean shot a wary look at him, wondering what his brother had noticed, but Sam seemed to be on the level, nothing to hint his brother was going to make some smart-ass comment about domesticity.

When they'd been growing up, it'd been Sam who'd always unpacked. In the motels when they'd had family rooms, the two of them sharing a bedroom while their father had taken the main room. In the occasional rented houses or apartments when they'd had their own rooms. At Bobby's or Jim's places, when they'd stayed for periods of time. Sam had been the one to unpack all of his clothes, all of his books, to set them out and create a small illusion that they'd be there for a while, that they'd been there for a while.

He'd never seen the point. Sooner or later everything had to go back in the bags, why take it all out only to have to put it all back. Seemed like a waste of time and effort to him. Sam had been making himself at home, he realised now. Making himself a home. Even on the road. Even if it was just for a night. Surrounding himself with the things that meant something so that when he woke, it wasn't to a blurred impression of yet another reminder that they had no home. It was to familiar things, things that were connected to him.

He understood that impulse now, looking around. Every single thing he'd dragged up from the car had years' worth of memories attached to it. He could look at them and feel those memories wrap around him, instilling a small glow of warmth that he hadn't realised he'd wanted. Or needed.

He cleared his throat and walked past his brother, not wanting to talk about that feeling, not wanting Sam to see it in his face.

"You hungry?"

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

_Pain. _

Throbbing in his skull, making spots of light dance before his eyes. Kevin screwed his eyes shut for a moment then opened them again and looked at the notes. His vision had cleared a little and he kept writing. Something warm and wet trickled over his lip but he ignored it. He was so close, so close to seeing. He had to keep going, had to get it out of his head, had to get it down, real and tangible.

The block came and he stopped. He picked up the last few notes and got up, walking to the noticeboard and pinning them up. As he lifted his head to look at them, he felt an uncomfortable _shift_ in his head, registering it for a second before the pattern in front of him suddenly coalesced into a whole.

Three trials. The wolves of Hell. The spell of awakening. The closing of gates.

He smiled, his relief emerging in a huff of breath from his lungs. The warm, wet trickle over his lip increased and he lifted his fingers to touch it, looking down at them and seeing the bright red over their tips, then the sensation in his head returned, a rolling, sickening _flex_ inside his skull and the lights went out and sound and smell and taste and touch disappeared and he didn't feel himself drop.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

"What're you reading?" Dean walked into the library, burgers balanced on the plates he carried.

Sam looked up, the tantalising smells reaching him before the plate did. "Everything," he said with a slight shrug.

"Good, somebody's got to dig through all this, and it ain't going to be me," he said, turning away to put his food down on the other table.

Picking up the burger absently, Sam took a bite as his gaze ran down the page he'd been reading and he froze as the combination of tastes hit his tongue. He chewed, slowly, drawing out the delicious mix in his mouth and turning his head to look at his brother.

"Are these the –"

"Yeah," Dean nodded, hiding a smile that Sam had remembered.

"The ones with the –"

"Yep."

"And the –"

"Right."

"But you haven't –"

"No," he said, shrugging as he picked up his burger. The burgers had been a favourite with his little brother, when they'd been on their own, their father out hunting, tired of pizza and fried chicken and canned stew. He hadn't made them – or any of the other things he'd used to cook – since Sam had left for Stanford. "No kitchen."

He turned to look at Sam, the smile a little less hidden. "Eat."

Looking down at the burger, he wondered why he hadn't made these for Lisa and Ben, in the year that he'd been there. _Because the smell, the taste, brought too many memories of Sam_. The thought came to him and he acknowledged it, feeling a small, sharp pain in his chest. It had been something he'd tried to keep clear of, anything that could raise a memory of his brother.

He'd done a bit of cooking there, scrambled eggs because Lisa couldn't make them the way he liked, steak whenever they'd barbecued over the summer, jambalaya from an old recipe he'd somehow memorised on a hunt down in Baton Rouge. Not much, really. It hadn't felt like his place, the little house in Cicero, despite the fact that he'd been paying the bills and fixing the windows and the doors of the cheap rental, living there, dying there.

His phone rang shrilly and he put the burger down, fingers reaching into his pocket and pulling it out.

"Yo?" He picked up the burger again.

"Dean? Come … quick …" Kevin's voice was thin and thready and there was a muted crash from the line.

"Kevin? Kevin!"

Sam looked across at him. "Something wrong?"

Dean looked at him, his face tight. "Guess."

* * *

_**MO-7 S, Missouri**_

It wasn't a long drive from Lebanon to Warsaw, and they were making good time, the traffic light for once and the road clear. The stereo played softly, just audible above the thrum of the tyres, the warm, deep rumble of the engine that felt like a second heartbeat to him.

He kept his speculations about what might have happened to the prophet pushed aside. There were a thousand possibilities and no way of knowing until they got there and he didn't want to use up the energy he had worrying about them. Beside him, Sam sat silently, lost in his own thoughts, his breath fogging the glass of the window repeatedly with every indrawn and exhale breath.

_You are nothing. You're as mindless and obedient as an attack dog. What are the things that you want? What are the things that you dream?_

The shard of memory came out of nowhere and Dean flinched back a little, his hands gripping the wheel as he saw his face, eyes filled with black, staring at him again.

That was a long time ago, he told himself firmly. A long time and a lot of water under the bridge. But it seemed like yesterday. Seemed like five minutes ago. Because nothing had changed, not really. He'd tried to fight and it hadn't worked out and he'd failed again.

He dragged in a deep breath, flicking a sideways look at his brother. It was about the future, he thought. That's all. Sam had one, had possibilities, had options. So far as he could tell, he didn't. He would hunt. He would close the gates. And he would most likely die when he did. Did he want anything else?

A thin tendril of some feeling, some repressed and ancient feeling curled up inside of him. He squashed it down. Hope was an overrated feeling. He couldn't do what he had to if he had any hope at all. The disappointment was too fucking crushing.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

The boat looked undisturbed. Garth's small pickup wasn't in the lot and nothing else looked out of place. They'd go in through the forward cabin, Dean thought, gesturing to the bow at his brother, pulling the automatic from his jacket pocket.

Slipping in through the iron door, Dean hesitated, listening. Down the river, birds called. The ripples of another boat's wash slapped softly against the hull. That was all. He moved aft, knowing Sam was checking each of the cabins they passed, his attention fixed on the bulwark door in front of him.

It opened easily and he took two long steps into the cabin, gaze flicking to the side and the companionway steps, his gun twitching in that direction as Sam stepped into the cabin behind him.

The long room looked the same as the last time he'd seen it. Crap piled in the sink and the smell of burned something and the table Kevin worked at covered from end to end in paper and books and the notes on the tablet. Nothing looked like it'd been messed with, although the chaos made that difficult to tell with any certainty.

There were two loud thumps from the head, and Dean stared at the closed door narrowly, moving up the narrow passage between the table and the cupboards that lined the opposite wall.

Unlike the bulwark doors, the head had a regular timber frame door with thin panelling, and he shoved it open, gun raised.

Inside, Kevin was doubled over the toilet, retching helplessly into the bowl. The smell hit Dean and he grimaced, huffing out the foul air, shifting slightly to see Kevin's face.

"Found him," he said quietly to Sam.

Sam walked up beside him, looking in. Kevin gagged and heaved, oblivious to them.

"Kevin? You okay?" Dean asked, thumbing the safety back on his gun and sliding into his jacket.

Kevin jettisoned another load from his stomach and sucked in a deep breath. "Ate … something …" His stomach clenched again and he shut his eyes tightly as another chunk flew up his throat and arced into the bowl. "G'way."

"Right," Dean said, turning away but leaving the door open. "Leave you to it."

Sam slid the Taurus back into the waistband of his jeans, looking around the cabin. "What's that smell?"

Dean's brows rose. "Aside from the one coming from the head?"

The toilet flushed and they both moved unconsciously away, behind the table as Kevin staggered out, a wad of toilet paper held under his nose.

"God, Kevin, you look like hammered crap," Sam said, looking at him as he collapsed into the chair at the table.

"Yeah," Kevin agreed readily, pulling out the blood-soaked tissue from his nose and tossing it on the floor.

"Are you sleeping?" Sam asked.

"Not really."

"You eating?"

"Hot dogs, mostly," Kevin said, staring ahead of him and waiting for the throbbing to settle down. It did, usually, after a few minutes.

That explained a lot, Dean thought disbelievingly. "Look, I'm going to feel dirty even saying this, but you might want a … salad. And a shower."

"I know," Kevin said, his voice mostly emerging through his nose. "And I've been getting bad headaches and … uh … nosebleeds … and I think … maybe, I had a small stroke."

Dean flicked a glance at his brother, wondering if that could possibly be as bad as it sounded. Kevin was still on his feet. Functioning. Mostly.

"But it was worth it," the prophet looked up at them with a tired smile.

"What was worth it?" Sam asked.

"I figured out how to close the gates of Hell," Kevin said, getting to his feet and tapping the tablet in front of him.

"You –" Dean stared at him, aware that beside him, Sam's mouth had dropped open.

Inside, something switched on. Something he hadn't felt for a long time. _Purpose_. His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at Kevin, not seeing him, seeing instead what he needed to do.

"So, what does this mean? What are we looking at?" Sam asked, and Kevin nodded, turning to the noticeboard. They followed him across the room, looking at the incomprehensible collection of words, symbols, scratched notes and diagrams that covered the wall.

"It's a spell," Kevin said, gesturing to the notes. "Just a few words of Enochian."

He picked up the note and handed it to Dean.

Dean took it. "Ah, here we go."

"But … the spell has to be spoken after you finish each of the three trials," Kevin continued, looking at Sam.

"Trials?" Sam took the paper as Dean handed it to him. "Tests?"

Kevin nodded. "The tablet says "One man is chosen. One man only can close the portals. Who chooses to undertake these tasks should fear not danger, nor death, nor …" He frowned slightly. "A word I think means getting your spine ripped out through your mouth for all eternity."

"Good times," Dean commented.

Kevin looked from him to Sam. "Basically, God built a series of tests, and when you've done all three, you can slam the gates."

Sam stared at him. "What kind of tests?"

"Not fun ones," Kevin said, looking at the notes on the board. "I've only been able to crack one of the trials so far. It's gross – you've got to kill a wolf of Hell and bathe in its blood."

"Hellhound?" Dean lifted one brow. "Awesome."

Sam's brow wrinkled up as he looked at his brother. "You've killed a hellhound, in Carthage."

"Did you bathe in its blood?" Kevin asked, looking hopefully at Dean.

"Not so much," Dean said, shaking his head. "Guess that doesn't count then?"

"I don't think so," Kevin said with a sigh of disappointment. "These trials – I get the impression that they're like ingredients for the ritual. Each one has to be followed exactly, or the spell won't work."

"How are we going to find a hellhound, Dean?"

"Well, hounds are used to collect on crossroads deals, so I guess we're looking for someone who signed over his special sauce ten years ago, we get between him and the hound and take it out."

"Right. Easy," Sam said sourly, looking at the energy crackling through his brother.

"It doesn't sound easy," Kevin said tiredly.

"It's not," Sam said dryly. "Dean –"

"Look, you get on the internet and see what you can dig up," Dean cut him off sharply, turning for the door. "I'm going on a supply run. We need goofer dust and the kid needs to eat something that's not ground up hose and pig's anuses – not that there's anything wrong with that." He started up the steps.

Sam looked after him uneasily. He got that Dean was hyped on finally being able to start, but there'd been a recklessness in his face that he hadn't seen for a long time. A long, long time. He frowned as a memory snagged at him, a glimpse of a motel room, but not one that they'd paid for, mattresses piled against the walls and windows, the pervasive scent of mould. It was gone and he closed his eyes briefly, trying to force it back.

"You know," Kevin said consideringly. "I really stink."

Sam opened his eyes and looked at him, mouth rising in a half-smile of acknowledgement. "Shower wouldn't hurt."

He walked to the table as Kevin left the room and looked down at the papers. Here and there he could see spots of a rusty red. Dried blood. Kevin had been pushing himself over the edge for too long. There were still two other trials to figure out and if he managed to give himself a good seizure or stroke, they would have a hell of a time finding the next prophet, of the six that were still out there. And kidnapping them. And convincing them of the importance of what they had to do.

He sat down and closed his eyes. The memory rose again, unbidden, unsought.

_Give me your phone. If Gordon knows our cell numbers he can use the cell signal to track us down. _

Pulling out the SIMs, stomping on the cases.

_So you're the guy with nothing to lose now, huh? Oh wait, let me guess. Because, it's because you're already dead, right?_

Dean's face, closed and shuttered, refusing to admit to the wild recklessness that was filling him. Refusing to admit that he didn't care if he lived or died.

_Yeah, I've been following you around my entire life! I mean, I've been looking up to you since I was four, Dean. Studying you, trying to be just like my big brother. So yeah, I know you. Better than anyone else in the entire world. And this is exactly how you act when you're terrified. And, I mean, I can't blame you. It's just ... I wish you would drop the show and be my brother again._

Was that what was going on now too, Sam wondered, tipping his head back. His brother had looked at the books in the library and backed away, not seeing himself locked away in there, reading, learning, chasing down the legends.

He sat up, staring at the wall opposite. Dean had come out of Purgatory raw and bloody and … cold, he thought. Colder, darker, than he'd ever seen him. Even after Hell. In fact … after Hell, he'd been scared, mostly. Of what, Sam had never been entirely sure. Dean had barely spoken about it. But he knew that when the angels had come to get him, to torture the demon, Dean had been terrified.

Of what he'd done, locked away, never let out? Of what he'd become? He shook his head impatiently. What he'd thought he'd become, perhaps. It'd taken him a long time to realise – to remember – Dean's weaknesses. His brother was good at hiding them, hiding that deep fissure of caring that lay side by side with his sense of responsibility, both driving him, flogging him sometimes, Sam thought, to protect, to save as many as he could.

He leaned his head against his hand, elbow propped on the side of the table. Caring too much and never believing that anyone cared that much about him. Never letting himself believe it, never letting himself believe that he deserved it.

The thoughts, diaphanous and vague, floated through his mind. He felt as if he was close, close to knowing what was happening, what had happened to his brother.

"Okay, I feel a lot better," Kevin said, coming out of the other cabin and shattering those tenuous connections completely. Sam looked around him, clamping down on his frustration and forcing himself to look at the kid.

"Kevin, buddy, you have to slow down," he said, watching him pick up a cup of cold coffee and chug it down.

"What?"

"Get some shut-eye, take a day off," Sam said, gesturing around. "Open a window."

"No." Kevin stared at him. "You said 'nuking Hell'. That's how I get out. That's how I go home!"

"Right, it is," Sam said placatingly. "But, you can't live like this."

"I can't leave, Sam," Kevin ground out. "Every demon on the planet wants to peel my face off. I can't talk to anyone except you guys, or Garth, when he swings by, or my mom … and when I call her, all she does is cry." He looked away and Sam dropped his gaze, knowing what he was talking about, knowing it so intimately that his pulse had accelerated hearing Kevin say the words.

"I just … I need this to be over," Kevin said, his voice quiet again.

"I know. I do," Sam said, looking up at him. "But trust me on this, this whole saving-the-world thing? It's a marathon – it's not a sprint. You gotta learn to pace yourself, take care of yourself. Because if you don't, if you die before the end – there was no point to everything you've just put yourself through."

Kevin looked at him, nodding a little as the words registered.

They both turned to look at the door as Dean walked in, carrying a couple of plastic bags of groceries, the energy still crackling around him, making him talk faster, move faster. Sam watched his brother's gaze flick around the cabin, knew that Dean had noted every change from the second he'd entered the room, the reactions and senses that he'd come out of Purgatory back at high level, directed by a laser-accurate concentration.

"Did you know that there are, like, six thousand kinds of tomatoes?" Dean said, apropos of nothing, dropping the bags on the other table and walking to straight to Sam. "Did you find anything?"

"Yeah," Sam said, looking down at the laptop. "Demon signs. Ten years ago. All centred on Shoshone, Idaho."

"How long did they last?"

"Four weeks," Sam said, turning the laptop around. "Meet the Cassity's – small time farmers who struck oil on their land in February, '03, which is weird because geological surveys –"

"Yep, you had me at weird," Dean said absently, reading the article. "Alright, we thinking deal?"

"Best lead we got," Sam agreed, getting up and closing the laptop.

"Let's go visit the Beverley Hillbillies." Dean looked at Kevin. "You're staying here. Eating. Sleeping. Working on step number two."

Kevin nodded.

"Oh, and if you come across anything about hellhounds, drop a dime, because between the claws and the teeth and the whole invisibility thing, those bitches are … well, real bitches."

He turned away again, his hand diving into one of the grocery bags, pulling out two economy-size pill bottles. "Blue ones are for the headaches. Green ones are for pep."

He tossed them to Kevin. "Don't OD."

Kevin caught them and looked at the labels as Dean turned away and walked to the door. Sam caught his arm as he passed him.

"You sure about that?"

Dean looked at him for a moment, his eyes dark and glittering, voice low and hard. "Sam, we are on the one yard line, it's time to play through the pain."

He walked away, the route fixed in his mind, a rough estimate putting it at around a fifteen hour drive. Speed limits notwithstanding. Three shifts, he'd take two, first and last. He glanced at his watch, nodding slightly to himself. They'd be there early tomorrow morning.

* * *

_**I-80 W, Wyoming**_

The silence had stretched out for the last four hours, since they'd swapped in Nebraska. Dean heard Sam's indrawn breath and waited.

"You really haven't changed, have you?" Sam said abruptly.

"Pass."

He felt his brother's eyes boring into the side of his head. "Don't think I don't recognise this, Dean, 'cause I do."

"Recognise what?"

"The recklessness. You can't wait to throw yourself to the wolves," Sam said tightly.

He snorted. "Which part of closing the gates of Hell are you having a problem with, Sam?"

"The part where you get killed trying to do it by yourself because you don't give a shit if you live or die."

"You heard Kevin, only one man can do it," Dean said impatiently, ignoring what his brother had said. "That let's you out."

"Why?" Sam twisted in the seat to look at him.

"Not having this conversation," Dean told him, staring at the road unfolding in the bright glare of the car's headlights.

Sam looked at Dean's profile, outlined by the dashlights against the night. His jaw was set, the muscle bunched up at the point. He could provoke him, he thought, chewing on the corner of his lip, but it wouldn't help, not now. If he got pissed, he'd just figure out a way to dump him and keep going on his own.

He hunched back into the corner and closed his eyes. Dean had made a decision, for no reason that Sam could work out. But he wouldn't change it, wouldn't back down or listen to logic. Not now.

* * *

_**Shoshone, Idaho**_

The black car slowed down as the wide double gates swung open, polished brass letters advising them they were entering the Cassity Farm. To either side of the smooth, asphalt drive, post-and-rail fences delineated neat, green fields and pastures, dotted with mature trees. The drive curved gently around and led them to the buildings, passing a long horse barn and pulling up in between an imposing two storey stone and brick ranch house and several smaller buildings serving as garages, machinery sheds, workshop and bunkhouse. Dean pulled up next to a shiny green and yellow JD tractor, a pair of jean-clad legs visible from underneath it.

"What did we find out on who's living here?" Dean asked when he turned off the engine.

"Alice Caffity and husband, Carl Granville, full time residents. I couldn't find anything on staff," Sam said, looking around, "but from the size of the place, I'd say they have a few." He looked back at his brother. "And the plan is?"

"Check them out. Hound's due, so if we see anyone acting like they're hearing and seeing things, you get them out of the way," Dean said, picking up the serrated, bone-handled knife and tucking it into his jacket. "I spike Fido and the crowd goes wild."

Getting out, they both looked down at the sound of the socket wrench spinning under the tractor.

"Hey pal, who runs this joint?" Dean asked.

The creeper rolled out from under the tractor, and a slender woman sat up, looking at them, wary dark eyes checking them out as thoroughly as they looked her over.

"I do," she said, getting up gracefully, the pair of wrenches transferred to one hand. Jeans, close-fitting grey t-shirt shirt tucked into them, red plaid shirt and thick sheepskin vest over set off her smooth tan skin and the jet-black hair that framed her face.

Sam's brow creased a little. "You own the ranch?"

"No. Just manage the property," she said, her voice accented slightly. "You guys here about the job?"

"How'd you guess?" Dean said quickly, glancing sidelong at Sam.

The woman smiled. "We get our share of drifters," she said, wryly. "Ever worked a farm before?"

"Definitely," Dean nodded. Sam saw her eyes narrow fractionally at his brother's blatant lie.

"We're quick learners," he said, and her gaze shifted to him, a brow delicately rising.

"It's not a hard job," she said slowly. "But I need people who'll pull their weight, not mouth off and do nothing."

Dean smoothed his expression out.

"Ellie?"

They turned to see a beefy-looking man walking from the house path across the drive toward them. Curly brown hair and a short beard and moustache framed a fair-skinned, chubby face, the brown sports coat not suiting the chambray shirt he wore under it.

"What've we got here?"

Dean leaned forward, offering his hand. "I'm Dean, this is Sam."

Carl took it, hiding a moment's surprise at the strength in the grip of the hand around his. "Oh, I'm Carl Granville," he said, turning to Sam. "Pleasure."

"Pleasure," Sam murmured. "So you're not a Cassity?"

"My wife is," Carl said cheerfully. "Her and her family own the place. I'm just one of those, what you call 'trophy husbands'," he said, chuckling.

Sam smiled politely as Dean looked around. Carl looked at Ellie, who was smiling indulgently.

"So, are we hiring the fellows?" he asked her. She glanced back at them.

"Not sure yet."

"Oh, come on, they seem like swell guys," Carl said, smiling at them.

Dean nodded, mouth lifting to one side. "Sure, yeah, we're swell."

Carl nodded to them and walked toward the garages and Ellie looked at them, her expression indicating she was acting against her better judgement.

"Okay," she said. "We'll try you out for a week. I don't like you, you don't like me, it's over, no hard feelings."

"Done," Sam said, sensing his brother about to make a comment that might jeopardise even that tentative arrangement.

"Come with me," Ellie said, turning and walking across the drive toward the bunkhouses. They followed her along the neatly tended path and stopped as she opened a door.

"You bed down in here," she said. Behind her, Dean looked at the room, half workshop, with tools and benches lining one wall, a pair of single beds on the opposite side. "Breakfast is at five, dinner's at eight, and in between, you'll be doing whatever jobs I have for you. Questions?"

"We're good," Sam said, looking at Dean's expression.

Ellie nodded, leaning against the door frame, her arms crossed. "Why?"

Sam looked at her in confusion. "Why what?"

"You both seem to be reasonably intelligent, educated kind of guys," she said to him. "Why do you want a low-paying, crap job like this?"

Sam blanked for a moment, staring at her. Dean cleared his throat.

"We're travelling," he said, the lie emerging without volition or thought. "Just need to make enough money to keep going."

"Travelling," she repeated slowly, looking at him. "Together."

"We're brothers," Sam clarified. "Taking a road-trip, one of those things."

"Uh-huh," she said. "Okay, the job's yours if you want it."

"Thanks."

"You've got fifteen minutes to get your gear and get settled in," she said briskly, walking out of the room between them. "I'll see you in the barn then."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, they stood in the horse barn and Ellie handed them a pair of stable forks. "Wheelbarrows at the end of the aisles, pick up everything solid and all the wet straw in every stall. Then break out clean straw and refill the beds until they're about this deep," she said, holding her hands eighteen inches apart. "Higher around the walls."

She walked away and Dean opened the stall door closest to him as Sam went to get a wheelbarrow. The piles of manure in the bedding were pungent and obvious, dark against the bright yellow straw.

"Crap," he said looking down at the first pile on the end of the fork. "She literally meant 'crap'."

He dumped the load in the wheelbarrow in the aisle and looked at the horse standing in the stall opposite. "I hate you."

He turned as a strident female voice came from the end of the barn.

"I don't care! It's five times the price!"

Alice Cassity, dressed in breeches and polished leather boots, a woollen show jacket and carrying a velvet-covered helmet, strode in front of the doors and stopped. Ellie wheeled around her.

"Since I changed the feed the skin problems have disappeared," she argued, stopping in front of Alice. "It's working, Ms Cassity, you have to give it a chance."

"My land. My animals. My _money_. My way! End of story," Alice snapped at her, turning on her heel and walking away.

Ellie watched her go and glanced into the barn, seeing Dean and Sam watching. She walked over to them, her mouth twisting down.

"She's a real piece of work, huh?" Dean said.

Ellie glanced back over her shoulder at the open doors. "Alice Cassity is a real piece of something," she agreed in a low voice. "But, what are we gonna do? She's the boss."

She shrugged and looked past them to the open stalls. "Check underneath, make sure you picked up all the wet straw," she added and walked down toward the other end of the barn.

"So what are we thinking?" Sam said to him when she was out of earshot.

"What? Deal-wise?" Dean glanced at the slim woman as she reached the end of the aisle. "Well, Ellie's the help so that rules her out."

"And Carl doesn't really seem the sell-your-soul type," Sam said. "So … Alice?"

"Ding, ding, ding," Dean said, looking at him.

"Should we talk to her?"

"Why? So she can lie to us and call the cops? No," he said, shaking his head. "No. We're gonna have to go stalker on this one, Sammy."

* * *

The terrace fire was lit, logs crackling and glowing in the flames, the sounds of Alice's laughter and the low murmur of their conversation carrying in the cool night air. Dean shifted his position slightly as he felt his leg numbing and let out a soft exhale.

Behind him, Sam leaned against the stone wall, small field glasses against his eyes as he scanned the grounds. This was a long shot, at best, he thought. Alice seemed the most likely to have made a deal, her outburst earlier suggesting that she wasn't entirely used to being wealthy, even after ten years. But they didn't have the exact date of the deal, only that it was close. Hellhounds usually came at midnight, on the tenth anniversary of the deal. Oil had been found on the old farm in February. They had another few days, possibly.

He lowered the glasses as he heard the lonely ululation rising from the hills to the north. Below him, Dean shook his head.

"Just a wolf," he said softly. The voices of the wolves of Hell were deeper, rougher. He wouldn't ever forget that sound, or seeing the creature break through the glass doors, a monstrous spectral dog that had seemed sometimes more solid, sometimes less, red eyes aflame with hell's fires as it had stared at him, stalked toward him, snapped at him.

Sam looked back at Alice and Carl, watching them look around. Alice got up, leaning over to kiss Carl and walked away from the table, heading for the horse barn.

"Stay or go?" Sam watched her leave. Dean straightened up.

"Go."

They hurried around the side of the building, increasing speed as they crossed from the house to the barn.

Dean was thirty feet from the open barn door when he heard the scream and stopped dead, spinning around and racing back to the house.

"Keep an eye on her," he called back over his shoulder to his brother, the knife in his hand as he skidded across the wet grass to make the corner.

Carl lay in front of the fire, his chair overturned beside him, a pool of blood spreading out around him. Dean slowed, turning his head from side to side, listening. Far off the single howl of the grey wolf rose into the night again, but nothing answered it.

Dean looked down at the man at his feet. From pelvis to sternum, the deep claw marks were easily visible, through clothing and skin and muscle and fat, the various shades of purple and red showing the organs through the rent meat. His head lay at a right angle to his body, attached to his body by a few thin strips of sinew. _Bite_, Dean thought, crouching close but keeping out of the blood pool. _Through the windpipe and back to the spine_. He could see where the bones had been crushed.

_Goddammit._

Straightening, he looked again at the wet mess of Carl's abdomen, his hand creeping across his stomach reflexively. There were no scars there. But his nerves, his skin and muscles remembered the feeling of the long, scimitar-shaped claws ripping through him.

Sam arrived at the terrace at the same as Ellie, both staring down at the body helplessly.

Ellie looked at them for a long moment and turned away, going inside the house to call the police.

"Sonofabitch," Dean said, walking away from the body.

"So what do you think?" Sam looked at him.

"I think Carl signed a deal, now he's dog food," Dean said tersely. "Hellhound's gone and we were too busy chasing a pile of jack to stop it."

Sam looked at the dark grounds, unable to argue that. He looked up as Ellie came out of the house, her arms wrapped around herself.

"Sheriff's on his way and the coroner," she said, staring at the ground.

"You alright?" Dean looked at her. She nodded, keeping her gaze down.

"He – he was a good man," she said softly. "A kind man. He didn't deserve that."

Sam looked at her, wondering at the odd tone in her voice. She looked up abruptly, her gaze meeting his for a moment, then looking at Dean. "The family will be here tomorrow, for this. I have to – I have to get things ready."

Turning around, she walked back into the house, and they heard the snick of the lock as she closed the door behind her.

"Let's grab our stuff and get out of here." Dean walked down the shallow steps of the terrace, heading for the bunkhouse.

Sam nodded, glancing around again. He walked down the steps and slowed as he saw the barn doors standing open, the light on inside. Changing direction, he walked across to the barn. His work gloves were still in there.

Inside, Alice Caffity stood next to her horse, the rich chestnut coat shining as she ran the body brush over it. She looked … different, Sam thought, walking past her and picking up the rawhide gloves, tucked into a rail at the side of the aisle.

"You okay, Mrs Cassity?"

"Fine," she said absently, brushing slowly, her left hand curled loosely around the halter.

"You sure?" He stopped on the other side of the horse. She looked at him, her face expressionless, her eyes a little remote.

"I really am, and … I know I shouldn't be, because I loved Carl," she said, a faint hint of disbelief threaded through her voice. "I think."

She looked down at the brush in her hand, stroking it steadily along with the lay of the coat. "I just can't remember why."

Sam looked at her, taking a couple of steps closer. "What do you mean?"

Alice sighed. "I mean … Carl grew up around here, we went to school together, and he was always mooning around after me, but I never … I used to make fun of him."

"When did you two get together?" Sam asked, a suspicion forming.

"Valentine's Day, 2003. I was at this party, Carl was there. It was like I was seeing him for the first time," she said, her smile a little self-deprecating. "And suddenly he was cute. Smart. And funny … it was magic." She rubbed the horse's cheek, under the halter, looking down. "Carl and I were happy for ten years. Now he's dead … and I'm not sad, angry … I'm just … fine."

Sam looked away, nodding. She turned away, moving the brush down the horse's side, the action dismissive.

Sam walked slowly back to the bunkhouse. Carl had made a deal but it hadn't been for oil, he thought. Someone else had done that. In February.

_Demon didn't leave. I never counted on that. After our deal was done the damn thing stayed at Lloyd's for a week. Just chattin'. Makin' more deals. I tried to warn folks, but, I mean who's goin' to listen to an old drunk?_

George Darrow. The loft full of extraordinary paintings. Goofer dust along the threshold.

He opened the door to the room. Dean was packing up his bag.

"Hey," Dean turned around. "We got any graveyard dirt?"

Sam frowned, thinking of what was in the trunk. "Should. Why?"

"Yarrow?"

"Yeah," He looked at Dean as the combination registered and held up his hand. "No. Dean – no! We're not summoning a crossroad demon!"

Dean looked at him dryly. "Plan A bombed. So, welcome to Plan B. We get some red-eyed bitch in a trap, we hold the knife on her until she calls in a pooch. Special delivery."

"Yeah, except when Crowley finds out we're dialling up Hell, he won't send one hellhound, he'll send a hundred!" He looked at his brother's insouciant expression, feeling a tightening in his stomach. "That's not a plan, Dean. That's suicide."

"You got a better idea?"

"Yeah, we stay here," Sam said. "I just talked to Alice in the barn. Carl didn't sell his soul for oil – he sold it for Alice."

"His wife?"

"He loved her, she barely noticed him, so he made a deal, and now the time's up, it's like she hardly even knew the guy." Sam looked at Dean. "There's another deal coming due, Dean. And it's here."

"The demon stayed around? Signed up a few more?"

"Wouldn't be the first time we've seen that," Sam said, shrugging. "Look, Dean, this family is rich because someone booked a one-way ticket downstairs, and you heard Ellie, as of tomorrow, they're all going to be right here."

"And you want to scope them out?" Dean asked.

"I want to kill a hellhound. And not die," Sam said shortly. "How 'bout you?"

Dean looked at him. Sam already knew, he thought, a little surprised by that. Knew what he was thinking about. It'd been a long time since Sam had pegged him that accurately. He wondered briefly if it would change anything, then shunted the thought aside as irrelevant.

"Two days," he said quietly. "And we do it my way."


	29. Chapter 29 Heart, Faith and Steel

**Chapter 29 Heart, Faith and Steel**

* * *

_**Cassity Farm, Shoshone, Idaho**_

The first car to pull in arrived early afternoon, a gleaming black Lexus four-wheel drive, not a speck of dust on it. Dean watched an old man get out, passing the keys to Ellie as he walked past her and into the house. Pa Cassity, _sans_ his latest wife, the lingerie model. _What a shame_.

Sam had printed out a short bio on each of the Cassity's, gleaned from the internet on the doings and background of the family who'd become newsworthy with their sudden ascension into the world of the rich and shameless. Noah Cassity and his many marriages, to women whose ages had been ever-decreasing, was worth a billion apparently, lived in Dallas most of the time, and sat on the board of the company that pumped his oil. Alice was the eldest of the three daughters, her mother had died in childbirth with the birth of the youngest. Cindy, twenty-nine, was the middle girl. Margot was the youngest at twenty-seven. Apparently fed up with her family, she'd been the hardest to find any information on, having moved to Paris and for the most part, leading a low-profile life.

An hour later, a silver Mercedes pulled up and a woman got out, staggering slightly on four-inch heels, tight silver pants encasing long legs, a fluffy white coat skirting her hips, long blonde hair lifting in the breeze that had begun to freshen. She left the keys in the car and walked up the steps into the house, drifting a little from side to side. _Middle sis_, he thought. The country singer who'd shot up the charts over one spectacular year and drifted down to oblivion over the next nine. Not exactly the way a demon would do it.

A plain Ford rental pulled around the drive a half hour later and parked neatly in front of the garage and he watched Little Sis get out and grab a bag from the back seat, walking around the flower beds and into the house through the kitchen door. Tall, dark-haired and slender, she was refreshingly ordinary in jeans and a thick woollen jumper and down vest.

All present and accounted for, he thought, getting up and walking down to the barn where Sam was cleaning the saddlery.

* * *

"Well?" Sam looked up, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a gleam of sweat over his face.

"All here," Dean said. "And no, from thirty yards, I didn't get much detail."

Ellie came through the door, pulling her gloves off and tucking them through her belt as she looked at them.

"Bad news," she said. "We have a regular firm who handle the family get-togethers here at the house and they've just called to say they'll be short a waiter," she explained, looking expectantly at them. "I'll need one of you for a couple of hours to help serve dinner and pour drinks."

Dean slapped Sam on the shoulder. "Sounds like fun, I won't wait up."

Sam looked at him sourly. "No. No, no. This has to be decided the old-fashioned way."

Dean looked at him, feeling his stomach clench slightly, glancing sideways at Ellie. "I don't think we need to go that far."

"I insist," Sam said, holding up his fist. "Or you forfeit."

Dean scowled at him and lifted his fist, supporting it with his other hand, trying to force his fingers into doing what he wanted instead of what they always did.

"You ready? One, two three," Sam said, looking down at his closed fist and Dean's open palm.

"HA!" Dean crowed.

Ellie looked from one to the other with raised brows. "Are you done?"

Sam nodded resignedly.

"Be at the kitchen by six," Ellie told him. "Manuel will be there and he'll explain the drill."

"Dean can handle your work as well his own till eight," she added, looking at Dean steadily and hiding a smile as his lingering expression of delight disappeared.

Sam's face brightened and he nodded. "Six. Kitchen. Got it."

* * *

The dining room was lit gently by a spreading overhead modern fitting, lighting the table with its burden of dishes and bowls and platters, and leaving the edges of the room in dimness. Cream-painted panelling covered the lower two-thirds of the room and a warm caramel paint had been used for the upper third, making the high-ceilinged room seem more intimate.

Sam followed Ellie into the room, the suit provided scratching at the back of his neck, sleeves and pant legs both a couple of inches too short. Ellie looked no more comfortable in a crisp white shirt, black skirt and heels than he felt as she set two more bottles of white into the fresh ice buckets at the end of the table. Carrying the bottle of red, Sam walked around the table, pouring into the over-sized glass goblets.

"Alice, I'm so sorry about Carl," Margot said, looking at her sister. "I mean, he was the love of your life."

"Right." Alice looked at her vaguely.

"She can do better," Noah barked out at the end of the table. "Local yokel. You come back with me, Alice, and there're a dozen men who'll be lined up for you."

Margot watched her older sister's face twitch in distaste as she looked away.

"Maybe she needs to follow in your footsteps, Pop," Cindy drawled from beside him. "Marry a child and try to have more children to fuck up." She looked at him, eyes widening. "Oops, but she can't, can she. Biological clock stopped ticking!"

"Elicia's not a child," Noah said, his eyes narrowing at her.

"Right! She's prostitute," Cindy exclaimed, waving her glass for emphasis. "Who _looks_ like a child."

"Are you done?" Margot said coldly. "Alice is in mourning."

"Margie, have you put on weight, sweetie?" Cindy asked. "All those Paris tarts and pastries? Or is it just the lighting?"

"God, Cin, give your mouth a goddamned rest, will you?" Alice turned to her sister suddenly. "Just because you crapped all over your life, doesn't mean that you have to crap all over ours!"

"There you go, Margie, the widow has awoken," Cindy said, smiling at Alice. "I could never work out why you married that blimp, 'Licey. Especially since he was a party favour for almost the whole family."

"What?"

"Oh … you didn't know?" Cindy's smile got wider, as her words began to slur. "Margie sampled dear old Carl in … when was it, sugar?"

"Shut up, Cin."

"All of you shut up, god!" Noah snapped. "How did I raise such a nest of vipers?"

"One day at a time, Pop," Cindy snarled at him. "You didn't give a flying rat's ass about us when we –"

"Can we not do –"

"You slept with Carl?" Alice looked at Margot disbelievingly.

* * *

In servery beyond the dining room, Sam's brow creased up as he listened to the conversation behind him. "Are they always like this?"

"Only if they're together," Ellie said lightly.

"How do you work here?"

She looked up at him, smiling slightly. "I love the place. The job, the animals. And they're not often all here together. I can tune them out when they are."

Sam looked at her and picked up another of the open red wine, turning back to refill the glasses, trying not to hear the vicious insults that flew back and forth across the polished oak table.

* * *

He slipped out ten minutes later, seeing Dean lurking at the edge of the terrace.

"Anything?"

"No," Dean said, looking at the lighted windows of the house. "What's happening inside?"

Sam grimaced. "Last three episodes of Dallas."

"What?"

"Nothing," Sam said shortly. "They hate each other and they're not shy about letting each other know. It's brutal in there."

"So no idea on who made the deal?"

"None."

"Well, the singer's dream-come-true didn't seem to last the whole ten years, did it?" Dean said slowly. "So we can probably rule her out."

Sam nodded. "The old man and Alice are still contenders."

"What about the youngest … Margot?" Dean asked, looking around.

"I don't know," Sam admitted. "She seems the most normal of them, but so did Carl."

Dean's phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket, looking at the ID on the screen.

"Hey Kevin, what's up?"

"Hey, Dean … good news," Kevin said, his voice jittery over the speaker. "Ah … I think. Kind of."

"Don't oversell it," Dean said acerbically.

"Sorry, I found something on the tablet, about hellhounds," Kevin said, the sound of rustling paper clear audible in the background. "This mean anything to you? _The dire creatures may only be seen by the damned or through an object scorched by holy fire_."

"Like holy oil?" Sam asked, looking at the phone.

"It's gotta be," Dean said. "We could use a window."

"Or glasses," Kevin suggested.

"I think we've still got some Jesus juice in the trunk," Dean said to Sam. "I'll take care of the x-ray specs. You stay here and do not let JR and the gang out of your sight, alright?"

Sam nodded. "Okay, hey Kevin –"

Dean stopped, his thumb poised over the button, waiting.

"You did great, man," Sam said loudly. "No more pep pills. Get some sleep."

"Okay. Thanks," Kevin said as Dean ended the call, looking at his brother darkly and turning away.

* * *

Sam walked back into the kitchen, looking around. The catering company were loading the dishwasher and packing up and Manuel turned around, smiling at him.

"Another Cassity dinner survived by all," he said. "Can you take off the suit, Sam?"

Sam looked down at the black suit and nodded. "Yep."

By the time he'd changed out of it and handed it back, it was past eleven. He walked into the dining room with the last bottle of red, stopping as he saw that only Cindy and Alice were still at the dining table.

"Where's Noah and Margot?" he asked, looking at them.

"Gone out," Alice said tiredly, leaning her head against her hand.

"Oh, look," Cindy slurred, squinting at the tall, narrow windows at the end of the room. "Daddy's drunk and armed. Must be Christmas."

Sam turned to see Noah and Margot walking past, wearing coats and carrying rifles.

_Dammit._

He put the bottle on the table and strode out of the room, heading for the kitchen and the back door to intercept them.

They were walking up the drive when he spotted them. "Hey!"

Neither stopped or turned around and he started running.

* * *

Dean walked into the workshop and stopped, looking around in frustration. Glasses. Where the fuck was he going to find glasses? He started looking in everything on the bench, pulling out the drawers under it, searching through the various containers that were scattered and stacked over the top. _C'mon_, he thought frantically, _check the house, you're not going to find glasses in here_.

He moved to the next shelf, and pulled an old grease tin closer, his fingertips closing around smooth plastic frames. _Unbelievable_. He pulled out two pairs, one with heavy, black plastic frames, the other with a half-frame, and looked through them. Reading glasses, the lenses only mildly magnifying. Perfect.

The ceramic ewer was still in the trunk, wrapped several times in an old blanket and tucked into a small duffle. Grabbing it, he poured a little oil onto the concrete and lit it, passing the glasses through the flames slowly a couple of times. Scorched, not burned, he thought, setting the first pair aside and picking up the second.

* * *

"Where are you going?" Sam caught up to them.

"Wherever I damned well please," Noah grunted, walking on. "Wolf that took my son-in-law is a man-eater. Got to be stopped."

"We're doing this for Carl," Margot added tonelessly, matching her father's stride, the rifle held in the crook of her arm, barrel down.

"I'll come with you," Sam said desperately. No weapons, no flashlight, nothing at all that would stop a wolf, let alone a hellhound, he thought. But better than letting them go out by themselves, maybe shoot each other.

Noah stopped, turning to look at him over his shoulder. "You know anything about hunting, boy?"

"A little bit, yeah." Sam said.

Margot looked at her father and after a moment, Noah nodded, jerking his head toward Sam. She lifted her rifle, handing it to him.

"Let's do it," Noah said, turning and walking away. Sam followed them, the rifle heavy in his hand. It was a Winchester, .30-30. It would take down a wolf. Probably just piss off a hellhound. Better than bare hands, though.

* * *

Dean picked up the glasses and put them, looking around. The holy fire had changed something, he thought, looking at the landscape that was now without colour or depth, a flat image of shadow and light in shades of grey. He saw Ellie walking across the yards by the barn and backed into the workshop, putting out the small fire with his boot sole and trying not to look as if he was doing something suspicious as she came around the end of the Impala, looking at him.

"I like it," she said, walking over to him.

For a second he couldn't think what she meant, then he realised he was still wearing the glasses and he snatched them off, tucking them into a pocket. He couldn't think of a believable lie to explain them right this second.

"The whole 'Clark Kent' look," she said, stopping in front of him. "Very mysterious, very sexy."

He smiled uncomfortably. "Ellie, hey."

"Hey," she said, smiling as she walked closer.

Dean looked down at her, brows drawing together slightly when she reached out, her hand resting against his chest. She looked up at him, her gaze lingering for a second on his mouth, before lifting to meet his eyes.

"So …" she said softly, her lips curving up a little. "There's a little something here, isn't there? You want to come to my room, and … have sex?"

Staring down at her as her hands ran lightly down his chest, Dean didn't register what she'd said, his mind focussed on the almost-unrecognisable sensation her touch was generating in his nerves.

"What?"

She smiled. "I – I'm sorry, I don't usually do this," she said, her voice deepening slightly as she pressed closer to him. "I guess … I guess I'm feeling my oats tonight."

_Sex. With her. Now._

He leaned back a little, looking down at her as the full import of what she'd said, what she was offering and what it meant hit him.

_No strings. Just sex. Now._

_Now_. When he was on the job. Looking for – looking for – for hellhounds. To complete the first trial. To close the gates. Forever.

"I-I can't," he said miserably, the spiralling hum of heat rising up and outwards through his body.

He watched her eyes widen, the desire disappear from them, watched her gaze fall as she shifted back. "What?"

_No. No, no, no, no. No_. He closed his eyes briefly, shutting out the image of her face, the images that filled his mind. The possibilities that were still coruscating through his body, lighting him up.

"Okay," she said slowly, moving backward, her gaze flicking between the ground and his face. "Embarrassing."

"Oh, no, no, no …" he stammered as he realised what she was thinking. "I – I want to, believe me."

"No, it's okay, you don't," she said, shaking her head, her voice hardening slightly. She looked away. "I guess I'm going –"

"Ellie, um," he said quickly and she turned back to look at him. "Um … raincheck."

She looked at him and his heart skipped a beat suddenly at the sadness that had filled her eyes. "This is … one night only," she said, very softly. "Sorry."

She turned on her heel and walked away, going around the car and disappearing into the darkness.

Not as sorry as he was, he thought, watching her. Where had that sadness come from? One minute she'd been – he swallowed at the flickering memory of her standing so close that he could feel her breath on his lips – the next that had gone, and he didn't think it was entirely due to what she'd seen as a rejection. She'd looked … he frowned slightly, trying to pin down that image. She'd looked as if she'd lost something, a last chance at something.

* * *

Sam followed Noah and Margot into the woods, the path covered in damp, fallen leaves deadening their footfalls, the woods filled with insect song, moonlight filtering through the bare canopies of the trees, falling in shafts and columns, barely enough to see ahead.

_This was such a bad idea_, he thought. _No backup, no plan, no fucking weapons, no magic fucking glasses_. Two drunken idiots leading them deeper into the woods and one of them could have made a deal that was going to draw a hound to them out here like ants to honey.

The crack of a branch to one side of the trail was loud, at least to him. He turned sharply, scanning the darkness under the trees for anything. Frustration bit into him. He couldn't see or hear the goddamned things, wouldn't know where it was or where it was going until it attacked. He looked around for Noah and Margot and swore softly under his breath as he saw they'd gone.

Moving fast up the trail, he saw Noah ahead, the man's gun swinging toward him.

"Where's Margot?" he snapped at the old man.

"I don't know," Noah said, looking around. "I thought she was with you."

The scream was loud and close and Sam bolted up the track, hearing Noah's panting breath behind him, dropping back as he came around the curve in the trail. Margot lay on the ground, arms flailing in front of her as she screamed. Sam watched blood spurt from her throat, her body jerked and lifted and he raised the rifle, firing just above her head.

"Oh my god, Margie –" Noah moaned from behind him.

"Get back to the house," Sam snapped, looking around the empty trail.

"No, no, that's my daughter –" The old man cried, struggling to get past him.

"Back to the house, now!" Sam said, pushing him hard down the trail. Margot was dead. The hellhound was gone.

Following Noah as he stumbled and sobbed down the trail, Sam's thoughts circled endlessly. The demon signs had lasted four weeks in the area. There could be more deals, more deaths. They still had no idea of how to find who'd signed up. Alice had been bewitched into marrying someone she hadn't loved. Didn't mean it hadn't been her who'd wished for wealth. Or the man in front of him. Or even Cindy. He guessed that even a deal could turn sour if you were dumb enough to wreck it.

The house appeared, and they half-ran down the drive, Sam prodding Noah along whenever he slowed down, and looking back behind them.

* * *

Dean looked at the three people sitting on the sofas in front of him. None of them was worth the effort it would take to save them, he thought. Had a family and had torn it to shreds without a care in the world, just thrown each other away.

"Alright," he said, his voice hard. "Ten years ago, one of you met someone. Carl did too and Margot. Smooth, charming customer who told you all your dreams could come true – this ringing any bells?"

"No." Noah looked at him stubbornly. "It doesn't."

Dean looked at Cindy who shrugged. Alice's brow was furrowed.

"There was that guy …" she said slowly, turning to Cindy. "Don't you remember? In the old house?"

"Oh … yeah," Cindy said, nodding. "He was smooth." She turned to her father. "You remember, he stayed for dinner, and was in town for a few days after."

Noah's expression lightened. "The English guy?"

"Yeah," Cindy said, nodding. "Cutest accent. Margot had a crush on him."

Dean glanced at Sam, mouthing 'English' at him. Sam's eyes widened abruptly.

"This guy, do you remember his name?"

Noah looked at him. "No."

Cindy looked at Alice, who shrugged. "I thought he said his name was Fergus."

"Fergus … Crowley?" Dean asked her.

"Could've been," Alice said. "Is it important?"

"Crowley's not coming here himself, not to collect a few souls from ten years ago," Sam said to Dean in a low voice.

Dean nodded. "Just send the hound to pick them up."

"What?" Noah asked. "Look, are you going to tell us what that thing was?"

"It was a hellhound," Dean said shortly, turning to look at him. "See, when you sell your soul to a demon, they're the ones that come and rip it out of you."

"Demon?" Alice looked up at him.

"Crowley," Dean said. "Your smooth, charming dinner guest. Now, if you didn't sign, great, that freak out there won't touch you, but if you did, I need to know, and I need to know now." He looked around them. "So, hands up."

"Wait," Noah stood up, looking at him. "The English guy was a demon, and now there's a hellhound after us?"

Dean looked at him steadily.

"Are you insane?" Noah looked at his daughters.

"They're obviously insane," Cindy interjected.

"Don't play dumb," Sam said quietly to her.

"Yeah, I'm not playing," she said acidly. "I didn't sell my damned soul."

"Carl sold his soul for love," Sam said, looking at Alice. "He's gone."

"What'd Margot want so much that she got hit?" Dean looked around at them again.

"What?" Alice looked at her father in bewilderment. Cindy and Noah were looking at the floor.

The sense of time ticking by was growing stronger in Dean. "Seal them in," he said to Sam.

"Yeah." Sam nodded and picked up the bag of goofer dust from the table. "Look, I'm going to spread goofer dust across the doors, the windows. That'll keep the hellhound out. For a while."

"What does that –? How long?" Noah asked petulantly.

Dean felt his meagre store of patience running out. "Long enough for me to stab it in its throat."

"No … no way … you can't, you can't do this –"

"Yes, I can," Dean overrode him loudly, pulling out the automatic and pointing it at him. "You wanna know why? Because it's what I do, and buddy, I'm the best. See, I gut Old Yeller out there and maybe, just maybe, you walk away. I don't – you're meat." He levelled the gun at Noah. "So sit down, shut up." He watched Noah sink back down to the sofa as he pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. "And put these on."

Sam closed off the room, pouring the dark grey dust across the thresholds and windowsills. He 'cuffed the remaining Cassitys to the stone and metal coffee table, making sure the handcuffs were locked.

"I don't – who are you people?" Alice said, looking at him as he checked the cuff around her wrist.

"We're here to help," Sam said with a sigh as he got up.

"Like you helped Margie?" Noah asked sarcastically. Sam ignored him.

"When the hellhound gets close, you might start seeing things, hearing things. It's gonna feel like you took the brown acid – and it's trying to kill you," he said quietly. "The handcuffs are so you won't hurt yourselves."

"And when one of you starts bugging out, we'll know who's on tap to be puppy chow," Dean pointed out cheerfully, turning with the last bag of dust to fill the doorway to the hall.

Following him across the line, Sam waited until he was standing. "So, what's our play?"

"Well, you camp here, figure out who whored their soul," Dean said quietly, pulling out the second pair of glasses from his pocket and handing them to his brother. "I'm going to go scout the grounds, see if I can't gank Huckleberry Hound before he makes his next move."

He started walking along the hallway. Sam looked at the glasses in his hand for a moment, then turned and hurried to catch up.

"Wait, you're not going alone, Dean, I'm going to come with you."

"Wrong," Dean said sharply as they walked into the kitchen.

"Ah, they're on lock down and you need backup," Sam said as Dean stopped.

"No, I don't," Dean said.

"Yes, you do."

"No, I need you to be safe, Sam, okay?" Dean said, looking at him. "That's what I need."

"What? What am I – when are _we_ ever safe?" Sam countered incredulously.

Dean sucked in a breath. "This is different."

"How?"

"Because of the three trials crap," Dean said resignedly, a smile stretching his mouth that held no humour at all. "God's little obstacle course."

Sam frowned at him, not sure where his brother was going.

"We've been down roads like this before, man," Dean said. "We both know where this ends. One of us dies. Or worse," he amended.

"So what? You just up and decided it's gonna be you?" Sam looked at him, understanding hitting him like a ton of bricks. "Look at us, we're still both standing here."

"I'm a grunt, Sam," Dean said simply. "You're not. And you told me yourself, that you see a way out, you see a light at the end of this ugly-ass tunnel. I don't."

Sam looked at him, unable to argue with that, not knowing why.

"I'm going to tell you what I do know," Dean continued, the smile in his eyes filled with pain and a raw, desperate longing. "I'm gonna die with a gun in my hand, 'cause that's what I have waiting for me, and that's all I have waiting for me."

Dean stared at him, jaw clenching as his chest constricted. "I want you to get out. I want you to have a life, become a scholar, whatever … you, with a wife and kids and grandkids, living till you're fat and bald and chugging Viagra – that is my perfect ending."

"It's not mine," Sam said tightly. "Not by a fucking long way."

"Too bad."

"You've done this to me before, Dean." Sam looked at him. "You remember how well that worked out?"

"You know what you're doing now, Sam," Dean countered, his face cold and drawn. "This is the only ending that I'm going to get. So I'm going do these trials, I'm gonna to do them alone. End of story."

"No. It's not," Sam bit out.

"You're staying here, I'm going out there, if land-shark comes knocking, you call me," Dean said coldly. "If you try to follow me, I'm going to put a bullet in your damned leg."

Sam watched him turn away and walk to the door, closing it behind him as he stepped outside. He would, Sam knew. He was wound up so tightly over this, he'd do it without thinking, just to keep his brother out of the way.

He looked back through the kitchen to the Cassitys, chewing on his lip as he tried to decide what to do. Someone had made a deal for the oil – Noah? Alice? Who?

Walking back to the living room, he heard them before he got there.

"Why the hell would you think that?!" Noah growled at Cindy.

"Because you're a walking corpse and you're married to a centrefold!" she spat at him. "I did the math!"

"Well, do it again. She likes money and I'm rich," Noah snapped. "And you sing like crap, so explain the music career?"

"Hello? Autotune!?" Cindy snapped back at him.

"Alright! That's enough." Sam walked in, his expression sour as he looked at them.

"I don't know why you even think one of us made a deal?" Noah said.

"Because you struck oil where there was no oil," Sam said exasperatedly. "That didn't seem weird to you?"

Noah looked at the floor. Alice turned to look at him.

"Margie …" she said softly. Sam looked around at her. "Margie used to say that, if we were rich, we'd all be happy."

"Right," Noah said, rolling his eyes. "We're the damned Ingalls!"

Margot, Sam thought, looking at them absently. Then it was over. The last hellhound had come for her.

* * *

Dean put the glasses on as he walked across from the house. The fields and buildings sharpened and faded to the chiaroscuro of black and white and grey instantly. The wind was picking up, rustling the bare branches of the deciduous trees, hissing in the pines, a steady soft noise. Over it, he heard music, and he turned to look at the horse barn, seeing a light coming from the cracks between the closed doors.

He walked across the asphalt, looking around. He'd forgotten about Ellie. The music sounded as if it was coming from her quarters. He pushed the sliding door open and took off the glasses, tucking them back into his pocket as he shut the door behind him.

The song was much louder here, and he saw the light under her door. He tried the handle, the door swinging open, the music filling the room. Ellie stood, swaying slowly, a bottle of beer dangling from one hand, her back to him. She was wearing a tight coffee-coloured camisole and her jeans and he walked behind her to turn off the stereo.

She turned around as silence fell in the room, her eyes widening a little as she saw him standing there.

"Just in time," she said, smiling.

"Yeah," he said distractedly, walking toward her. She looked a little worse for substances and he didn't want to worry about her with the hound still prowling. "Are you okay?"

"I'm good," she said, closing her eyes and stepping closer to him, her hands sliding up his jacket to curl into the lapels and pull him down. "And I bet you're great."

Dean felt her lips brush over his and he closed his eyes, heat fluxing through him like an electric shock, kissing her back before he knew what he was doing, wanting to give in to that feeling so badly he could feel himself trembling.

_Bad timing. The worst timing_. The thoughts broke through and he straightened up slightly.

She looked up at him through half-closed eyes. "Uh … yeah, great."

"Okay," he said, looking up, gathering what remained of his thoughts back tightly and walking past her to the window. _Fuck_. His pulse was pounding at the base of his throat and the familiar aches throbbing through his body were reminding him what he was turning down.

"Listen," he said, dragging in a deep breath and lifting the curtain, looking out for a second. Turning around, he met her gaze.

"Whatever happens, whatever you hear, you need to stay in here with that door locked. Sit tight, okay?" he said, walking back to her. "This is going to sound crazy, but there is something evil, out there."

"I know," she said softly.

He frowned at her. "You know?"

"It's coming for me," Ellie said, fear showing finally as she stared at him.

"What?" Dean looked at her. "You – you made a deal?"

She turned away from him, lifting a hand and rubbing her forehead gently as she walked to the end of the bed and sat down on the footboard.

"When my parents split up, my mom took a job here," she said, watching him follow her and sit on the bedframe beside her.

"It was before the Cassitys had money, but it was the best she could," she said quietly. "It was food, and lodgings, and a wage. I grew up on the old place."

"That's how you met Crowley," Dean muttered. Crowley held all the contracts now, he knew, as Lilith had before.

"They had a dinner party, and I saw him kissing Margie afterwards," she said, her eyes a little distant with the memory. "I was afraid. I was … naïve at seventeen and I ran away and hid. He found me later that night."

She frowned a little. "He was kind, as if he understood. Kind in a way that I hadn't known before," she said. "He seemed so nice."

Dean looked away. "Best conmen always do."

"He asked, if I had one wish, what would it be?" she said, her mouth twisting as she looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. "So I told him."

"And he made you sign over your soul."

"He didn't make me do anything," she contradicted him. "My mom – she had Parkinson's. The doctors had diagnosed the early stages a month before. I knew how that story would end," she said. "So I took the deal."

Dean watched her face close up a little.

"Mom is retired down in Phoenix now. She play golf every day," she said flatly, turning to look at him.

"That was a stupid move, Ellie," Dean said.

"I did it for my mother, Dean," she said, her eyes narrowing slightly. "What would you do for your mother?"

He looked at her. That question was unanswerable. It didn't matter that he knew where it all led, what came of decisions like that. In the moment, filled with terror and pain and grief, logic and reason didn't come into it. At all.

_The heart's desire comes at the cost of the soul_. He'd read that somewhere a few years ago, in some book of Bobby's. The price had seemed reasonable at the time, but the truth was, it hadn't been. He'd gone and when he'd gotten back, Sam hadn't been safe at all.

* * *

Sam looked out the window, seeing the gardens and buildings, flat and two-dimensional almost in shades of grey. He caught a movement in the bushes on the other side of the drive and leaned closer to the glass, his heart pounding as the amorphous shape materialised on the lawn, stalking across the grass.

He didn't hear the rattle of the cuffs behind him as Alice slid her hand free, and ran for the door, turning to see the door close behind her.

He was running, grabbing the rifle as he wrenched open the door and ran for the hall, hearing the clicking of her heels along the stone terrace.

Alice ran awkwardly across the drive to the garage. Her car was parked out in front, she had to get away, had to get help, save her father and sister, had to get out of here.

Sam's hand closed around her shoulder as she reached the car and the tension and fear and confusion of the last forty hours burst out of her.

"Oh please, just let me go, please, please," she sobbed, holding her hands up as he pressed her back against the side of the car, staring around them. He couldn't see it, no shape or movement and he gripped Alice's arm, forcing her away from the car, frogmarching her in front of him back to the house.

"No, please," Alice cried, barely able to see in front of her. "Please. Don't hurt my family –"

"I'm not," Sam growled, forcing her faster, looking around them. "I'm trying to help!"

He caught the movement against the edge of the trees and stopped, staring at the hellhound as it walked slowly toward them.

"Get in the house!" he snapped, pushing Alice ahead of him, swinging the rifle barrel up. "Get in the house."

"What –?" Alice gasped, tottering a step away.

"Go! GO!" Sam shouted, glancing at her and then back to where the hound had been. It was gone.

He watched as Alice ran back to the door, opening it and disappearing inside. Who was it here for? Who the hell else could've made a deal?

* * *

"You had to know this was coming?" Dean said, pushing those thoughts and memories and feelings aside.

"No! How?" She looked at him.

"Crowley didn't tell you about the ten year ticking clock?" he asked her disbelievingly.

"What? I knew that when I died, I wasn't going to Heaven, but he never said anything about that, or … monsters."

"Douche bag," Dean said, dragging in a breath and letting it out tiredly. So much for the much-mentioned integrity of demon deals, he thought. "He probably didn't say jack to Carl or Margot either."

"Margie made a deal?" Ellie stared at him. "So, she's –"

"She's gone," Dean confirmed.

"Oh … god," she said, brows creasing as she thought about it. "A few years ago, Carl got drunk. He told me he some kind of magic at a crossroads."

Dean rolled his eyes, nodding slightly.

"Summoned a demon? When I saw what had happened to him … I didn't know about Margie. I thought I was next."

"And you didn't run?"

"Where would I run?" she said defensively, her gaze cutting away. "All I wanted was one last meal, some tunes, and maybe …"

Dean glanced at the bed behind them as she looked at him for a moment then dropped her gaze. Maybe …

"I don't want to die," she said to him.

His attention sharpened as she looked around, her head tilted to one side.

"You hear something?"

"A howl," she said, nodding. Her head snapped around.

"What? What do you hear?" Dean said, looking around.

"Growling," she said, looking around the room. "Low. Deep."

She looked back at him and he saw her expression twist into a frightened grimace as she shifted backward, standing up and backing away from him.

"Dean? What's happening?"

"Ellie, whatever you're seeing, it's not real," he said, getting up, pulling the half-empty bag of dust from his jacket pocket. "It means the hellhound, it's close."

"Look, you need to stay inside this circle, okay?" he said, crouching down and pouring out the goofer dust into a small circle on the floor. He finished it, and glanced at her as he headed for the door. "Now."

"Dean," Ellie called as he reached the door.

He turned back, his voice low and hard. "No matter what happens, you stay inside that circle, you understand me?"

Standing in the circle of dust, Ellie nodded.

Opening the door, he grabbed the glasses from his pocket and put them, looking around the barn aisle as he closed the door behind him. The double sliding doors to the hay store were closed and he walked to them slowly, opening one and looking around.

The creature came around the outside doors, hip-high to a man, broad shoulders supporting the heavy head, long, shaggy fur almost floating around it as it slipped into translucency for a moment and solidified again.

He looked at it, clenching his jaw at the acceleration of his heart, the rush of adrenalin through his bloodstream. Desensitisation really does work, he thought distractedly, the sight of the creature no longer making him sweat with fear. It leapt across the span of the building, disappearing into the darkness behind hanging harness and a few scattered bales of hay.

"What are you waiting for?" he called out, his hand tightening hard around the bone haft of Ruby's knife. "Come and get it!"

Behind him, inside the barn, there was a rising scream and he turned back, his heart thudding, wondering if there were two after Ellie. In that moment of inattention, the hellhound launched itself at him, long claws slashing through his clothing and into the skin over his ribs, punching deeper into his side below them as the creature used the hold to lift and throw him across the width of the barn's end.

Dean hit the wall hard, the back of his head striking the metal frame of the building, his shoulder hitting a protruding hook and the knife dropping as the nerves from shoulder to fingertip were paralysed. He hit the ground, landing on the deep wounds in his side, biting back the scream that rose up his throat as pain like a flood of acid ate through his abdomen.

Propping himself on an elbow was worse, a white bolt of fiery agony greying out his vision as his skin stretched from hip to ribcage, pulling the wounds open further. Pressing hard against his side, he felt wetness and looked down at his fingers, seeing the bright red blood on him. _Dammit, other side, other side_, he told himself, grinding his teeth together as he tried to roll, the strength in his body leeching out with his blood.

He stopped moving when he saw a swirling patch of mist, a little above the ground, across the room in front of him. It dissipated only to be replaced by another a foot or so closer to him, and then another. In the soft dirt of the store-room, he watched the low puff of dirt, displaced as a heavy pad took another step.

The glasses were out of reach, out of his reach, he thought furiously. He couldn't see the knife at all. The breaths of the hound, hell-warmed air condensing in the cold of the barn, got closer, eerily soundless although he knew the sound it would be making, a gut-churning low growl that didn't sound like any animal on earth.

Well, he thought vaguely, you're definitely going to die, but not with a fucking gun in your hand. The thought was bitter and he looked at the nearing monster, feeling a clean, bright fear run through him, devoid of the shadows and darkness that most of his fears held. Just the fear of an ordinary man, looking at his death.

The gunshot was brutally loud in the closed space and Dean threw himself down, almost passing out as the wounds hit the ground again, hanging on to the small patch of light in the centre of the gathering black grimly.

The second shot rang out and he sensed the hound had gone, no longer feeling the radiation of its heat over his legs, or smelling the stomach-turning scent of brimstone washing over him.

He pulled his jacket tight against his side and pressed hard, lifting himself by increments up again. Sam stood in the centre of the room, wearing the half-frame glasses, the gun held loosely as his gaze searched the floor for something. He saw the knife at the same time Dean did, dropping the gun and diving across the floor for it.

_God, Sam, roll, roll fast_, Dean thought, his throat closed and dry as he saw the dust lifting on the ground. His brother did, the knife coming up as he rolled onto his back, one hand gripping the air above him, his face screwed up as if something was hitting it.

Dean watched Sam thrust the knife up hard, just behind his hand, saw the shower of black liquid fall out of the air and cover Sam's neck and chest. Sam wrenched the knife back, feeling it cut through flesh and bone as he angled it deeper and the black, ichorous blood of the hound splashed down over him, a stench filling his nostrils of brimstone and decomposition, with the undertone of wet dog.

_Kill a hellhound and bathe in its blood_, Dean thought, staring at his brother as Sam pushed the corpse off him, skin and clothing saturated, his head turning to look at him as he tried to catch his breath.

He'd done it. His little brother had passed the first trial. What the fuck did that mean, he wondered remotely, noticing the room was bulging in and out in time with his pulse. Losing blood, he thought, closing his eyes. He rolled onto his back and the impact with the ground for the third time in as many minutes overloaded his nervous system and swallowed him up in darkness.

* * *

Ellie looked up as Sam came in, Dean half-walking, half-dragged, his right arm over held over Sam's shoulder.

"Is it over?" she asked. "What happened?"

"No, it's not over, not really," Sam said tersely, going to the edge of the bed and easing Dean down onto it. "I need a first aid kit."

She nodded, stepping out of the circle and going to the cupboard under the window, pulling out a basin, several clean towels and a bulky white box. She passed the box to Sam and ran water into the basin, clearing the small table and setting it down.

"Hellhound clawed him," Sam answered her second question belatedly as he cut through Dean's shirt and peeled the cloth back from the wounds. She watched his face screw up as he saw the extent of the claw marks.

"Hot water, salt, alcohol," Sam said expressionlessly, pushing back the shirt and jacket as far as he could.

Ellie nodded and left the room, going to the feed room down the aisle.

On the bed, Dean moved restlessly and Sam laid a hand on his shoulder, holding him still, dipping a handful of gauze into the basin and wiping the blood from the tears. Shallow over the ribs, but maybe one had been cracked, he thought. Much deeper under the ribs. He rolled Dean to the right slightly, pulling his brother's shirts up to see his back, relieved when he saw that the skin there was clean and unmarked.

Ellie had filled another bowl with hot water and she set it down on a chair beside Sam, pouring a cupful of salt into the water without prompting, the bottle of alcohol going on the table. Sam nodded and dropped the stained gauze pads on the floor, taking another handful from the kit and soaking them in the hot water. He worked his way from the top of the long rips down to the bottom, until the flesh was clean and the blood flowing freely. Then he opened the alcohol bottle and sluiced the wounds with a steady stream.

Even unconscious, Dean arched up against the painful bite of the liquid and Sam tightened his grip on his shoulder. There could be fibres in those tears, he thought critically, looking at them, or dirt from the thing's claws, or from the ground where his brother had been lying. There wasn't much he could do about that here. They had a good store of antibiotics both in the car and back in Lebanon, it would have to be enough. No hospital ER was very understanding about wounds like these.

"Get me the butterfly closures, I'll need about ten," Sam said quietly to Ellie, taking fresh pads and soaking up the still-flowing blood. She moved to the kit and found them, stripping off the sealed packs and pulling the edges of the wounds together as Sam kept the skin dryish.

He nodded when she'd finished, taking a thick dressing and taping it over the mostly closed cuts. He lifted Dean up, and nodded to the rolls of bandages. "Need a pressure bandage, I think one of the ribs is cracked."

Ellie nodded and lifted out a wide, elasticised roll, undoing the end. While Sam held Dean upright, she wound it around him chest and back, keeping a firm, even pressure on it and fastening it when she reached the end, pulling down the t-shirt, button shirt and jacket over the dressings before Sam eased him back onto the bed.

"Thanks."

"Of course," Ellie said, picking up the mess of used gauze and tape and packs and putting them in the trash can. "Are the Cassitys alright?"

"About as much as they can be," Sam said, shrugging. He didn't care about the Cassitys or the girl standing in front of him. He'd killed the fucking hellhound and bathed in its blood and it meant one thing. He couldn't stop that thought from circling like a vulture in his mind.

Dean groaned softly, rolling to his right.

"Hey," Sam said, going to the clean bowl of cold water and washing the black blood from his hands and arms, dipping one end of the towel into the water and scrubbing it from his neck and stomach.

"Hey," Dean opened an eye, looking around. "I ditch you?"

"Just as well," Sam said. "Holes were pretty deep."

He watched as his brother got to his feet unsteadily, one hand automatically reaching to press against the dressed wounds, to stop any movement that would bring more pain. Dean was looking the other way, Winchester for so much pain that there was no guarantee it wouldn't show on the face.

"You need to go to a hospital," Ellie said, looking at him.

"Ah, I've had worse," Dean said tiredly, glancing at Sam. Ellie turned to look at Sam as well.

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding. "He's had worse."

She looked back at Dean. "So what now?"

"Now, we make a hex bag," he said. "And you start running. If Crowley can't find you, then he won't be able to sick another mutt on you."

"So, I'm not going to Hell?" she asked him, her face filling with a cautious hope.

"Not on my watch," he said, ignoring his brother's look from across the room. He knew Sam's arguments. But he had another idea. All she had to do was stay alive until he could figure it out.

"Will you give us a minute?" he asked her, glancing at Sam.

"Sure." Ellie nodded, walking past him to the door.

"Thanks," he said, walking to Sam as the door closed behind her. He gestured to his brother impatiently.

"Dean, even if she can dodge Crowley," Sam said slowly. "As soon as she dies, her soul is earmarked for Hell."

"I know," Dean said, reaching out and taking the towel from his brother and wiping his hands.

"Why'd you tell her that then?"

"I'll figure it out, Sam," Dean said evasively, pulling the Enochian spell from his back pocket. "She doesn't need to know the worst until it comes, does she?"

"That spell's not going to work for you, Dean," Sam said, looking at the paper.

Tipping his head back, Dean bit back the response he wanted to make. He looked down at the paper in his hands.

Sam was right, he thought as he stared at it. It wasn't going to work. He wasn't the chosen one. He'd failed the test. He stood there, looking at the symbols, his fingers tightening on the paper.

"It doesn't matter," he said abruptly, folding the paper up quickly. "We'll track down another hellhound and I'll kill it."

"No." Sam said decisively as he looked at Dean.

"Sam, I didn't pass the test," Dean said.

"But I did." Sam got up and walked to him. "And I'm doing the rest of them."

"My ass you are," Dean said angrily.

"Closing the gates … that's a suicide mission for you," Sam said, his voice even.

"Sam –" Dean started, his face screwing up as he recognised the argument coming.

"I want to slam Hell shut too, okay? But I want to survive it. I want to live." Sam looked at his brother, not sure how to get it across to him. "And so should you."

"You took that choice away from me once, Dean," he continued. "And it changed me. I did things, I made choices that I would never would have made if you'd been there."

"You'd have been dead," Dean said bluntly.

"That might've been better, then."

"I don't think so."

"It's not the same now," Sam said. "You have friends. People who care about you. You're not looking at a – a dead end anymore. You were right. I see light at the end of this tunnel. And I'm sorry you don't. I am. But it's there, and if you come with me, I can take you to it."

Dean pushed that thought away. There was no light for him. Maybe there never had been. He was supposed to have died. He was a wild card in this game, no play, no deal, not even supposed to be there. And he couldn't get clean.

"I'm – I'm not supposed to be here, Sammy," he said, mouth twisting as he tried to think of a way to say it without it breaking him any more than he already was. "What I did, what I've done. I can't save enough people to make that go …"

"Dean," Sam said, searching his face for what he knew was lying just beneath. "It wasn't evil. You're not evil, you didn't turn into a demon down there. You didn't."

Looking away, Dean didn't answer. Couldn't answer. He couldn't find the way out for himself. No one was going to be able to help him.

"It doesn't matter what you did," Sam pressed. "It doesn't matter what you felt."

"You don't know what I did, what I felt," Dean said, his voice dropping, riddled with anguish, his face twisted in pain as he swung back to face Sam.

"No, and I don't have to," Sam said flatly. "You were raised, Dean. God knew all of it, and he raised you. Doesn't that tell you something? Doesn't that tell you that you were clean? Doesn't that tell you deserve whatever happiness you can find in this life?"

Dean stilled, staring at him, the words registering, sinking in slowly.

"You were raised by an angel and given a job to do and you did it," Sam continued forcefully. "You heard Joshua in the Garden, you had a place there. Me, they only let in because of services rendered." He ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't look at what I'd done, didn't look at the choices I'd made. I ran. Every time."

"Sam, stop it. Be smart about this –" Dean looked at him.

"I _am_ smart, and so're you," Sam interrupted. "You're not a grunt, Dean." He shook his head. "You're the best damned hunter I've ever seen, and that includes everyone we've ever known. You're better than me, better than Dad ever was, because you _know_, every time, inside somewhere deep that you never fucking well acknowledge, what's right and what's wrong. You care."

Dean looked at him and turned his head away, feeling a rush of unknown emotion filling him, the wall in his head bulging outward further and further. He didn't think he could get this straight, didn't think he could handle having hope.

"I believe in you, Dean," Sam said softly, looking at his brother's profile. "Please. Please, believe in me."

In Dean's mind, he saw a six year old boy, standing fearfully on one side of a narrow, rushing stream, soaked to the skin, shivering, lips blue with cold. _"C'mon Sammy, take my hand, I won't let you go." _The words of the ten-year old on the far bank came back to him, clear as if he'd said them five minutes ago_. "You believe me, right? Trust me?" The little boy nodded, catching his lower lip between his teeth and reaching out across the roaring water. Dean had grabbed his hand, bracing himself on the bank. "On three, you jump. One. Two. Three."_ Sam had jumped, and he pulled. And his brother had landed safely on the other side.

He looked back at Sam, seeing that six-year old in the hazel eyes. _I believe in you, Sam_.

He looked down at the paper in his hand, and reached across, slapping it into Sam's.

Sam opened the paper and looked at the symbols. "Ka na. Arma. Da"

The first blast felt like a hot wind, brushing by him. The second hit inside. In his mind, stabbing into him like a white-hot poker. He twisted around, falling to his knees.

"Sam?" Dean stepped forward. "Sammy?!"

Inside his mind, something had changed, had opened, shedding a light too bright to bear. Eyes screwed shut, Sam felt the pulsing waves as pain along his nervous system, lighting up the neurons in his brain, flushing out everything at once.

"Sam!" Dean said from behind him. Opening his eyes, Sam felt the pain vanish from his head and a burning sensation reach into him where his palm touched the floor. He watched a light brighten beneath his skin, pulsing in time with his heart, reaching up his wrist and forearm to the elbow, pinpointed with a billion glowing white connections that lit the blood vessels in his arm from beneath.

"You okay?"

His arm was burning as if it was submerged in lye, the pain reaching right through him, taking his breath, slowing his heart beat, pulling at him. Then it was gone. He stared down at his arm, flexing his hand. There was nothing left of it. He could feel his pulse slowing, the pounding against the base of his throat diminishing and steadying and he got to his feet, picking up the paper.

"I'm good," he said to Dean, reassuringly, blinking rapidly. "I'm okay."

Dean looked at the sweat that was slicking his brother's brow, dripping from the end of his hair.

"I can do this," Sam said firmly, looking at him.

"I know," Dean agreed quietly, not sure what had happened, not sure that he'd understand even if he did know.

* * *

_**Rawlins, Wyoming**_

Dean lay on his right side, staring at the wall of the motel blankly. The room was dimly lit by the reflection of the motel's neon light outside, enough to see the shapes of things, not enough for the detail.

He couldn't drive for long stretches, and Sam had looked like three flavours of hell by the time they'd passed Rock Springs. He'd suggested the stop, they could continue on in the morning. There was nothing he wanted more right this minute than to be back in the goddamned bunker, protection all around them, the peace of his room, with everything he'd managed to keep through the insanity of his life, there, around him. But another eight hours wasn't possible, for either of them.

His head was a mess, he thought wearily. More than a mess, it was a fucking hurricane in there. Sam's … speech had sounded some great clanging gongs inside of him, but he couldn't work out how to make all the pieces fit together, how to accept what he thought might be true, how to deal with … any of it.

His brother was doing the trials. He didn't know how to deal with that either, his heart racing whenever he thought of what Kevin had said about them, what he'd felt in his own gut about it. What it came down to, was the same thing as always. The terror that he wasn't going to be able to protect Sam, wasn't going to be able to save him.

_You went to Hell for him_, the thought whispered into his mind. _On the rack for thirty years, no memories of anything but an endless sea of excruciating torment that had no beginning and no end. You tortured souls, not innocent ones, but did that matter, really, in the long run? You learned to drink the pain and to want it, the way it had soothed your own. And for what? To see your brother, not safe, not living a normal life, but changed, using his abilities with Ruby by his side, drinking demon blood to get stronger, tainted by the belief that he was strong enough to kill Lilith and keep Lucifer's cage intact and being sucked right into Ruby's plan to free the devil._

He shook his head slightly. Sam was right, things weren't the same now. _Doesn't make your sacrifice any more meaningful, does it?_ Done was done, he told himself. He'd let that go. He thought he'd let it go. Thought he'd dealt with it.

_Deal with this … nothing you've ever done together has worked out well for both of you. _


	30. Chapter 30 Familiarity Breeds Contempt

**Chapter 30 Familiarity Breeds Contempt**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam adjusted the tilting light so that it shone straight onto Dean's stomach, looking at the long, thick lines that ran from just above the lower ribs down halfway to his brother's hip.

"Looks good, huh?" Dean said, holding up his shirt with one hand as he peered down at the scars.

"Yeah, incredibly good," Sam agreed, glancing at the pot of unguent he'd made up from the recipe in the apothecary. The ingredients had all been there, and the thick paste had taken less than an hour to make, titled only 'Healing #1' with a short description in the book on its properties. The scars looked months old, not a little over a week. He looked up at Dean's face.

"And the movement, all there?"

"Yeah, the first couple of days, it was burning hot, but then it cooled off and there wasn't much more than the tug of the stitches," Dean confirmed, still staring at his skin. "Last couple of days, nothing. I did two hours last night, just to loosen up and see how it felt – not even a twinge from the muscle underneath."

He looked at Sam's face, the boyish grin infectious. "Some stuff."

"Yeah," Sam said, his mouth curving up to one side. "Lucky for us."

Dean shook his head. "Not luck. Not this time." He gestured to the books in the bookcase against the wall. "You found it."

Straightening up, Sam shrugged. "Lucky we've got this. Finding things here is a hell of a lot easier than randomly searching through Bobby's library."

"Yeah, I'll give you that," Dean said, dropping his shirt and sliding off the table as Sam turned off the lamp. "Your turn to cook."

"I thought I cooked last night?"

"Soup? You call soup cooking?" Dean shook his head. "Soup's hardly even a meal."

"It was bouillabaisse and you ate two bowls."

"It was fish soup and I was starving," Dean countered as he walked up the stairs. "C'mon, Sam, something that I can chew."

Sam exhaled, following him up the stairs. "Chili?"

"Now you're talking."

* * *

The desk lamp cast a wide pool of soft light over the polished walnut desk and dark green leather blotter, lighting up the photograph that rest at its base, and enclosing the room in a feeling of peace and solitude and calm. Dean sat in the chair, head resting against his hand as he read through the books he'd brought up from the library, the light turning the amber liquid in the glass beside him to gold.

Sam'd found four references to a myth of the Word of God, all from different sources, all independently verified, but all vague. None of the scholars writing about the so-called compendium written down by the scribe of Heaven had ever seen a tablet, or knew what had been engraved onto them, none of them had known of a prophet in any time in the last thousand years who'd read one.

It was possible that the information on the closing of the Hell gates across the world, those cracks and fissures where demons could slip out to tempt, to defile, to kill, had been recorded somewhere else. It was what he was hoping for, another myth or legend, giving some idea of what the other two trials were, some kind of lead that he could use to protect his brother.

But … so far … nada.

He lifted his head and rubbed his eyes tiredly. The paste that Sam had made for the wounds, and smelled like week-old dead dog, had healed him fast. Didn't have the same effect on the mind though, and he was no closer to getting what Sam had said, and what he was feeling, into any kind of framework that he could use.

_God commanded it. He has work for you._

Castiel had told him the first time they'd met, looking into his eyes, into his fear and thinking that was somehow reassuring. He couldn't imagine being in a brighter fucking spotlight than having God notice him. And he didn't know why the entity had ever thought he'd be able to do the work that had been set before him.

_But you did. You broke through to Sam. Not as Michael's sword. Not with the deaths of three billion people as the end result. Just through the power of your love for him, that wouldn't give up and wouldn't give in._

He couldn't work out who that soft voice in his mind was. Sometimes he heard his father's voice. Sometimes his brother's. Sometimes the angel's. But there was also a quieter, more gentle voice than any of them, speaking only when it was silent.

Was he saved, he wondered? Was he clean? He wanted to believe it. Wanted that weight and guilt and shame to go, to not have to feel or see or smell or taste those memories again. They rose in the night, and he was back in the pit and he saw the demons and the souls and the razor, over and over and he didn't think he could be, didn't think it could be that easy, 'cause, let's face it, nothing ever had been.

Picking up the glass, Dean swallowed a glassful of the smooth whiskey, relishing the soft roar down his throat and deep warmth that filled him. No more plastic jugs for him, he thought with a slight smile. Just the nectar of the gods and not so many ice-pick hangovers.

The clock told him it was just past one in the morning and he tossed the remaining whiskey in the glass down, closing the book and getting up. He stripped and picked up the pot of healing paste, smearing it over the long scars from end to end and pulling on a clean t-shirt. Turning off the light, he folded the covers, the novelty of thinking of sleeping in his own bed still fresh enough to drive him to make it every morning. It was an odd taste of normality that he liked but still sensed was a bond, tying him here, to this place that he wasn't sure he trusted, wasn't sure he believed in yet.

The sheets were cool and clean, smelling of whatever stuff Sam used on them in the industrial-sized laundry under the kitchen. Not so much the smell as the overall sensations of getting into the bed could drag out his memories of his childhood, before the fire. Before the pain. Soft pillows. Clean sheets. A rustle as his mother pulled the covers up and kissed him, her soft, gentle voice telling him that angels were watching over him.

He rolled onto his side and dragged a pillow under his cheek, closing his eyes. It was worth the effort of making the bed to have those thoughts in his mind before he let sleep take him.

* * *

_Darkness. And the sound of breathing, not his own. He froze, half-crouched, one knee on the floor, reaching around him to feel his surroundings. Nothing. At least not within arm's reach._

_The light wasn't strong but he squinted against it, too bright for eyes that had become used to the black. In front of him, in the centre of the circle of light, there was a plain, straight-backed wooden chair. The light didn't penetrate the blackness around entirely, but he could see that he was a room, a big room, with timber floorboards and plastered walls, high ceilings … alone. He closed his eyes and tried to hear the sound of that breathing, that other's breathing. He couldn't, not any more. Just the rasp of his own breath in his throat, the pounding of his own heart in his ears._

"_The quest is not yours."_

_The voice was deep and low and seemed to have no point of origin, and after a moment he realised he hadn't heard it with his ears, but deeper, in his mind._

"_Why not?" he asked, rising to his feet, looking around, feeling irritation at the way his palms were sweating, his breathing was catching._

"_Stand aside. There is other work for you."_

_It held no inflexion, no accent or even a tone he could discern. Like a computer voice, the words were delivered without any sense of feeling or special meaning, just the bare information._

"_What other work?" Dean looked around again, turning on the ball of one foot as he searched the darkness in the corners of the room. "What could be more important than closing the damned gates?"_

"_More than Hell threatens your world."_

"_My world? What?"_

"_The quest is not yours."_

"_Yeah, you said that." He stared at the chair in frustration. "What do you mean?"_

He woke abruptly, with the feeling of falling, being pushed off a cliff and falling, his arms flying out, eyes wide in the darkness of the room, pulse hammering against the base of his throat and his hands sweating uncomfortably.

_What the fuck?_ Reaching out, he slapped his hand against the switch for the bedside lamp, looking around the familiar and comforting room suspiciously. He remembered everything from the dream, as much good as that did him, he thought sourly, wiping his hands on the bedspread and leaning back against the pillows.

Closing his eyes, he thought that whoever was sending him messages would have do a lot better than that before he let his brother put his neck on the line for no good reason. Sam had a life here, and … maybe he did too, although he couldn't see it, couldn't see how he could fit in here in the same way that his brother did. He'd be damned if he just let that get thrown away.

_More than Hell threatens your world_. Now what the fuck was that supposed to mean? Monsters? Ghosts? Another piece of meddling by Cas' feathered brothers? His brows drew together at the last thought. The angel had been acting strangely … well, more strangely than usual … and he was still missing in action …

Tiredness dropped onto him and he shifted in the bed, rolling onto his side and pulling the covers higher against the cool air. He'd figure it out tomorrow.

* * *

The smell of coffee was another welcomed part of the arrangement here, Dean thought, yawning widely as he negotiated the kitchen doorway and the enormous island counter and made his way to the coffee pot. Sam's gourmet sensibilities had unexpected bonuses. He bought very good coffee.

Pouring out a cup, he leaned against the counter to sip the hot, aromatic liquid, eyes half-closed as the taste filled his mouth.

"Good, you're up," Sam said, walking into the kitchen and Dean looked at him questioningly.

"Just got a text message," he continued, carrying an empty cup to the pot as Dean moved aside and filling it. "From James Frampton."

Dean frowned. "The cop?"

"One and the same," Sam said, turning around to look at him.

"How the hell did he get your number?"

"I rerouted all our old numbers through a dozen dummy accounts with four different providers." Sam shrugged. "We changed numbers so many times in the last three years that I figured that any old contact was going to have trouble, and Charlie explained how to track them all down and string them together, aliased to get routed to the current ones."

Dean looked at him for a long moment and decided that understanding exactly what his brother meant, and what Charlie had done, wasn't worth the effort of listening to the techno-babble Sam could spout at the drop of a hat.

"Good."

Sam slid a sideways glance at him, dimples deepening to either side of his mouth. "Yeah, it wasn't that hard, the worst bit was breaking into the databases, to find the original accounts, had to find –"

"Sam …" he held his hand up. "Way too much useless information."

"Anyway, the text said he needs help," Sam relented.

"Good."

"Good?"

"Well, probably not good for him, all things considered," Dean admitted, finishing the cup and setting it on the counter. "But that debt's been irritating me for years, and now we can clear it."

Sam nodded. "When do you want to go?"

"He still in St Louis?"

"Yep."

"As soon as you're ready," Dean said over his shoulder as he walked out of the kitchen.

* * *

_**St Louis, Missouri**_

Dean pulled into the slot in front of the room and turned off the engine, opening the door.

"I'm just saying that I preferred the Marx Brothers," Sam said placatingly as he got out the other side, looking at his brother.

"You can't compare 'em," Dean argued, walking down to the trunk and opening it. "They're apples and oranges, man."

"I'm not comparing them, Dean. I'm stating a preference here."

"It's the wrong preference," Dean said stubbornly, pulling out his gear bag and shutting the trunk as Sam opened the door to the room. "It's like preferring … cake to pie."

"Don't even go there," Sam warned him. "So, we calling James tonight?"

"No," Dean said, dropping the bag at the end of the bed. "We'll just call him tomorrow. That drive was a bitch."

"What do you think he needs help with?"

"He's still a cop, isn't he?" Dean asked. "Something work-related, I guess."

He looked around the room distractedly. "I'm gonna go for a beer run, you need anything?"

"No, I'm good," Sam said, unzipping his bag on the end of the second bed.

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Sam looked at him, belatedly recognising his brother's reluctance to leave. "What?"

Dean shrugged, wetting his lips. "Nothing. I just … want to make sure that you're … okay."

_Nothing_, Sam thought. _Right_. "I'm good."

"'Cause, you know, we could find another devil dog, you could tag out, I could snuff the sonofabitch –"

"Dean," Sam cut him off. "Kevin doesn't even know what the next trial is yet. We haven't had any luck with getting any background on that either. So, whatever it is you're worried about … stop. I'll be ready."

He met his brother's gaze steadily, seeing the doubts in the dark green eyes, the tension that still held Dean's shoulders tight. After a moment, Dean ducked his head and nodded, unwillingly to press the argument further, Sam thought, watching him leave.

There was no way of knowing what was coming, but he felt ready. And he needed it. He needed to do this. That certainty had filled him from the moment he pushed the hound off him, spitting out the black blood that had sprayed over his mouth, turned his head to look at his brother's agonised expression.

He'd remembered. Finally. The exact moment that everything he'd believed in had changed. That he'd changed.

_I don't know if what I'm doing is right. Hell, I don't even know if I trust you. But what I do know is that I'm saving people. And stopping demons. And that feels good. I want to keep going._

He smiled humourlessly. What a load of crap that had been. Feeding himself, telling himself it was alright because the anger, that fury, that wild black horse that had been thundering through him since he'd watched Dean die for him, that had been under control, in harness and working for him and he'd felt calm and as if he knew what he was doing for the first time since he'd walked away from his father and brother to go to Stanford.

_Good intentions. Not good reasons. Live and learn._

* * *

Dean walked to the car, unlocking and opening the door and getting in, twisting the key in the ignition slot with only a little unnecessary force. He was going to push Sam away again, trying to get him to see reason about this, he thought in frustration, twisting around to reverse out.

_If I get wiped out trying to close the gates_, _it doesn't matter_. He eased back on the accelerator as the thought intruded, looking around vaguely at the dark streets. Was that true? Was that he really felt about it?

He didn't want to die, but he was prepared to, he rationalised, spotting the neon sign they'd passed on the way in and turning left to get to the market. He was ready for it. The bottom line was that if he died, Sam could go on, do some good in the world, find a life and a way to live it. If Sam died … what was he going to do, on his own, having failed at every job he'd had?

Not sit in some library and read through a couple of billion words to find answers to questions he didn't want to ask. Not find a woman to try to live with who wouldn't know him, would never know what he'd done or who he was. Not hunt alone, turning into the darkest part of himself with no reason to care if he crossed the line between human and monster and no reason to care if he lived or died in the hunt.

The math wasn't difficult.

_You didn't kill the hellhound_, the voice came quietly again. _You didn't pass the first trial._

No, but he could, he argued with himself. He could find another of hell's bitches and slit its throat and let the blech drain over him and then he could do the rest.

There was a free parking space in front of the store and he pulled into it, turning off the engine and sitting there, listening to the tick of the metal cooling.

_Why do you want to die?_

He didn't want to die. He just didn't want to keep failing. He couldn't take another failure. Couldn't live with it.

_Why do you think Sam will fail?_

Because he wants to live.

He blinked at the thought that had come instantly in answer to the question. The other side of that equation negated everything he'd been telling himself. The silence in the car was suddenly too loud and he opened the door, getting out and going into the store, grabbing a basket automatically and moving down the aisles, throwing things almost randomly as he tried to force that thought away.

* * *

The scratching at the door was loud, loud enough to hear from the other side room and Sam turned from the bathroom counter.

Claws? Fingernails? He walked across the room and opened the door. On the concrete walk outside the room, a long-legged black dog stood there, ears pricked and head tilted as it looked up at him. A red leather collar, sparkling with zircons, was around its neck.

He looked down along the row of rooms. There was no one there. The dog gave up waiting for an invitation and trotted inside, claws clicking on the floor. It jumped onto Dean's bed and settled down.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa … ah, hell," Sam said, shutting the door and walking to the bed. "Hey … you friendly?"

He held his hand and the dog sniffed it politely. "Friendly, good, alright."

Looking down at it, he couldn't see any sign that it wasn't taken care of well, the short, black coat gleaming with health, the dark eyes bright, nose cold, tongue bright pink. "Pretty dog."

The dog rolled over onto it's back, grinning up at him.

"Oh really? You want a belly scratch, huh?" Sam obliged, rubbing over its – _her,_ he amended mentally as he glanced down – ribs and down below them over the belly.

"So who do you belong to?" he asked her, pushing her back over as he looked at the collar, sliding it around to see if there were any tags on the rings. "Right, no tags. Ah … what are you doing here?"

The rumble of an engine and the headlights that lit up the windows brought a sudden surge of panic.

"Oh no."

The dog whined curiously, looking at the windows as Sam hurried to the door, opening it, stepping out and closing it behind him.

Dean got out of the car, shutting the door.

"Hey!"

He carried his impulse buys and the six pack of beer toward the room, a small frown drawing his brows together as he recognised his brother's look, the agitated cheerfulness that had filled Sam as a kid, knowing he'd done something neither father nor brother would approve of.

"Hey."

"Okay," Sam said, backing toward the room, his hands held up. "Okay, okay, okay. Before you get pissed off, I just want you to know this isn't my fault. She just showed up at the door, okay? Didn't track in any mud, just wanted her belly scratched … I figured, maybe she could stay tonight and we'd tried to find her home tomorrow?"

He reached behind him and turned the handle, pushing the door open, his face screwed up as he tried to judge his brother's reaction. Dean looked past him into the room, his face expressionless as he looked from the elegant black pumps at the end of his bed, up long, smooth legs, the little black dress that finished a couple of inches above the knees, his gaze shifting up the dress to firm, round breasts, the tops just visible in the décolletage of the dress, the necklace of diamonds that circled the graceful neck and the beautiful, dark-eyed, face above, framed with a silky fall of black hair.

The woman looked back at him, inclining her head slightly as she smiled.

Sam watched his brother's face as Dean assessed their houseguest carefully. It wasn't the expression he'd been expecting, that thoughtful perusal.

"She can stay the night," Dean said, looking at him.

He turned around. The woman's smile widened a little. He looked back at his brother, reaching for the knife sheathed at the back of his hip.

"Two seconds ago, she was a dog!" And he swung around, crossing from the door to the bed in two strides.

"Alright, who the hell are you?" Sam demanded.

"I'm not a skinwalker, so you can put away your blade," she said calmly, leaning back on her elbows as she looked up at him.

Dean walked in behind Sam, dumping the groceries and beer on the table and knocking the door shut with his foot.

"I'm a familiar," she added.

"A familiar," Dean said. Sam flicked a glance at him, knowing the thought processes that were already churning in his brother's mind.

"A companion to a witch," she said, nodding. "We take an animal form as well –"

Dean smiled. "Yeah, we're hip to the idea. Never seen a familiar without its witch, though."

Her gaze cut away from him for a moment, the long dark lashes sweeping down and hiding her eyes, then she looked back at them, and he wondered if he'd seen that second of discomfort in her face.

"I get a more accurate sense of people in my other persona, and approaching strange men in a motel room like this? Well, it can lead to misunderstandings that I don't have time for."

She sat up, crossing her legs. "My name is Portia. I am the companion of James Frampton."

Dean looked at her disbelievingly. "No. No, see that doesn't work for us, because that would mean that our buddy, James, is a witch."

She smiled at him, a little condescendingly.

"James is a friggin' witch?"

"He wasn't when you met him," Portia said carefully. "But that last case you worked with him on …?"

"Yeah, lunatic alchemist," Sam said, the details returning. "Nasty."

"James wanted to learn about that world," Portia said, getting to her feet. "The world that you showed him that exists in the shadows of this one. The black arts, witchcraft and divination … it became the centre of his life."

"Wait a minute." Dean shook his head. "You mean to tell us that James – the _cop_ – became a witch, because of us?"

"You don't like dogs, do you?" she asked him, her voice dropping a little.

Dean blinked, unsure of why that was suddenly relevant. And had that been the human equivalent of a warning growl?

"So James isn't a cop anymore?" Sam asked her.

"Sure he is," she said, looking from Dean to him. "Homicide detective. What he's learned has given him an edge that no other policeman in the city has."

"Then what does he need from us?" Sam asked, glancing at Dean.

"Well, something … something's been happening to him," she said, letting out her breath softly. "It started a few weeks ago. Excruciating headaches and screaming sounds in his ears. Then the nightmares a few days later. Horrible nightmares. He can't sleep or think, he can't work …"

She turned away from them, shaking her head. "He's seen the doctors. He's seen the healers in our own community," she said, turning back. "No one can isolate a cause. It's not psychological, not physical so far as anyone can tell. I thought … maybe you could find a way to help him."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face. "You know what we are? What we do?"

She looked at him steadily. "I know."

"Witches are not a regular part of our here-to-help list. We're the last damned people James should be spilling his problems to."

"He's a friend. You were friends," she said, looking from him to Sam, her voice rising a little. "He's been a cop for fifteen years, he's done nothing but good. He doesn't deserve this, doesn't –"

"Alright, alright," Dean said, looking away. "What kind of witchcraft is he practising?"

"He's not getting his power from a demon, if that's what you're hinting." Portia turned back to him, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "He follows the Right Hand Path and uses the energies of the earth."

Sam saw his brother's brows shoot up, sensing the comment that was forming. "Ah, you mentioned a community? Are there a lot of witches here?"

"Yes, they're clannish, but there are between one and two hundred of various faiths here in the city," she said. "Why?"

"Is it possible that James is being targeted?" Dean asked, following Sam's thoughts and pushing his own disbelieving comments aside. The man had saved their lives. The debt still rankled. He leaned back against the table. "Jealousies or competition or whatever the hell it is that witches have against each other?"

She looked down, thinking about that. "It's possible, for a very powerful practitioner, I suppose."

"Anyone like that around?" Sam asked. "Someone who also knows James?"

"No, not that I've seen."

Looking at the beers on the table, Dean reached for one, pulling it out and passing it to her. "Back to basics. Tell us about the dreams."

"He dreams of murdering people, with his bare hands. People he doesn't know, has never seen," she said, holding the bottle as she looked at him.

"What do you mean? He thinks he's actually killing people?" Dean frowned at her over his shoulder as he walked back to the table to get a bottle for himself.

"I think so," she said. "At least, that what it seemed like, before he started blocking me."

"Blocking you?" Sam sat down on the chair, twisting off the top of his beer.

"Familiars and their chosen witch can – we can communicate telepathically, hear each other's thoughts, see what the other is seeing. It's a part of the bond between us. I could see what was in his mind, until he shut me out."

"And you think there's something in there that he doesn't want you to see?"

"I don't know," she admitted, sadness edging her voice. "I don't know why he won't let me in, or why he believes … what he believes."

Sam looked down at the floor. Dean glanced at him then back to the woman standing in front of him.

"James doesn't know we're here, does he?"

She shook her head. "I sent the text. He can't go to the police. And he's afraid to ask the community now –"

"Why?" Sam looked up.

"Because of what he is," she said softly. "He's a cop, even before being witch. That has always made them uneasy, knowing he walks a line between their world and the normal world. They are not sure of his allegiances, not sure he won't turn on them."

"Sounds like fun," Dean commented dryly.

She looked at him, her face twisting slightly. "He follows his own code. He saves people, stops evil, but there are those in the community who are afraid of that, afraid that he won't hesitate to put them away or down if they drew his attention."

"I guess that could be a place to start." Dean tipped up his bottle, looking sideways at Sam.

Portia put her almost-untouched bottle on the nightstand and walked to the door. "I'll try and explain to him. Come in the morning. Please."

* * *

The loft apartment was big and comfortable, the furniture modern and expensive. Sam looked around, thinking that James had certainly been reaping the benefits of adding witchcraft to the cop's life.

When they'd met him, he'd just made detective, working on a series of bizarre killings that had shocked the city, putting the pieces together slowly and disbelievingly. He'd figured out that the two men who'd been flashing their tin around were not FBI agents, not with any law enforcement agency, and had confronted them privately, not sure of who they were but noticing that they were looking at the crime scenes, at the case, in a way that was different and were making progress. They'd teamed up reluctantly, and had tracked the killer to an abandoned substation on the city's limits.

"You had no right to do this!"

"I was afraid for your life!"

The conversation was clearly audible in the open plan apartment and Sam glanced at his brother, one brow lifting. Dean shrugged. Domestic disputes weren't of interest to him.

The alchemist's hiding place had been filled with the paraphernalia of the demented theories of the man, circles drawing in power, creating pseudo-real monsters that they'd had to dispel before they'd been able to reach the centre. Sam remembered James' face, eyes wide as they'd made their way through the defences, magical and prosaic, that had surrounded the place. He guessed it wasn't so surprising that he'd been drawn into that world.

"My life is none of their business!"

A moment later, the sleek Doberman trotted into the hallway, claws clicking on the hard floor. She stopped and looked at them, then veered away, going into another room.

James walked out and they got to their feet as he walked closer.

"Sam. Dean," James said in a low, resigned voice.

"Witchcraft, James? Really?" Dean asked him. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"You come to help, or pile on?" James said flatly.

"I'm just saying, you screw with that stuff, you're gonna fry your wiring." Dean shook his head.

"Alright," Sam cut in, looking at James. "James, tell us about the dreams." He glanced in the direction the dog had disappeared. "She said people were dying in them."

"Dying," James said tiredly. "They were torn to bits." He looked out the window, the morning light showing the lines of tension on his face, the shadows like bruises under his eyes. "I could feel my fingers, ripping into their flesh."

"But they were dreams?" Dean asked.

"Well, I woke up in my bed."

"Okay, so … dreams," Sam prodded.

"Not so sure," James said, looking at him. "Those people – they died. I checked with the precinct."

Sam inhaled. "Maybe you heard about it, and it stuck in your head?"

James smiled humourlessly at him. "You don't think I told myself that? You don't think I didn't say 'that wasn't me, I couldn't've done such a thing'?"

He turned away and picked up a plastic wrapped shirt from the wood basket beside the plain hearth. Pulling off the plastic, he dropped the shirt on the low table between them. The collar and front were a deep rust colour, spattered and soaked.

"Is it yours?" Sam looked at it.

James turned the shirt, showing the monogram on the breast pocket. JMF.

"Yeah, it's mine." He sat down in the armchair beside the table. "I woke up – I always wake up – in my bed. But I found this is the trash. And I found blood on the soap in the bathroom, on the tissues in the trash there." He leaned back. "What's happening to me?"

Dean sat down, looking at him. "You're the witch, James. Is it possible that you pissed off another one? Got a hex put on you?"

James rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. "You're talking about a spell that could control me, without my knowledge. Make me walk and talk and kill like a puppet."

"Yeah, that's what I'm talking about – you heard of anything like that?"

"No," James said. "But, I mean, relatively speaking, I'm young in this … I've been practising for five years and what I don't know …"

"Know the feeling," Sam said gently. "How can we find out?"

"Portia may be able to get some information from them." He looked up. "She's not … tainted … like I am, by what I do."

"How many of the dreams have you had?" Sam asked.

"Four," James said. "The last one was last night. It was a blind man."

Sam frowned. "Portia said the dreams have been coming for weeks?"

"The others, they weren't the same," James leaned forward in the chair. "They didn't have the vividness, all the senses involved. They started out like normal nightmares, you know. Images. Sounds. Not the smell and the feel and the taste." He closed his eyes as a shudder ran through him. "The first of the killing dreams was three weeks ago."

"Alright, James," Dean said quietly. "We're going to help you figure this out. But you're going to have to do your part."

"Which is?"

Dean caught the flare of hope in the other man's eyes and he reached down for the bag at his feet, lifting it with a clanking thump to the table between them. He unzipped it and pulled out a handful of iron chain.

"You're gonna have to stay put," he said bluntly, dropping the chain back into the bag. "House arrest, my friend."

Looking at the iron, James felt a frisson of fear. It would block him, as effectively as jessamine or mallow root or hawthorn. Stop him from reaching out or inwards to the power that had flowed for the last five years. He looked away, staring at the sunshine that lit up the wide windows, and nodded.

* * *

Sam looked up as the motel door opened, and his brother came through, holding up a paper bag.

"Got the last of it," Dean said, shutting the door and turning to the table.

"Right, well, I've been looking at the crime scene reports and they exactly as James told us," Sam said flatly, looking down at the screen again. "Vics, dates, locations … the most recent one, last night, was a blind man."

"That's not good," Dean muttered, opening the bag and tipping out the two plastic bags inside it onto the table. One bag held chicken feet. Chilled. The other was filled with a black liquid, the drained liquid from a body buried for one week. Both bags were tightly sealed. The smell of the fluid had ejected every last morsel of his stomach's contents and it was only just starting to settle down.

"Also," Sam continued. "I looked into his record on the force. He went from rookie detective to lieutenant basically overnight, and in the last four years, his solve rate has been right at a hundred percent."

Dean looked at him. "Of course, he's got the 'booga-booga' on his side."

Sam nodded, and Dean turned back to the table.

"Man, you know we have never actually seen this witch-killing spell of Bobby's work? Right? I mean, this is not a sure thing."

Sam snorted. "Is anything we ever do a sure thing?"

"Well, no, but I would just like to have the odds in our favour, as much as possible," Dean said, looking back at him.

Sam frowned as he sensed the conversation diverging from the spell to something else. "Right."

"Well, I'm concerned," Dean said.

_Concerned_, Sam thought. _Right_. His brother was no longer talking about the spell, but about the future. His future. Their future. The trials. Again. It wasn't a surprise. Terriers had nothing on Dean when it came to persistence.

"Concerned about the spell," Sam asked, looking at the ingredients on the table. "Or that I'm going to mess these trials up?"

He watched Dean give up the pretence of worrying about the spell, putting down the bottle he'd been looking at, turning to face him.

"Look, we get too far down the road on this? We can't go back," Dean said. "And it'll be too late for me to jump in."

Sam looked away, feeling that mistrust again, the sense that his brother didn't think he had what it needed to keep going.

"Who says you're going to have to?" he said, looking at Dean in frustration. "You know, maybe I'll actually pull this one off."

"I'm just saying –"

"I know what you're saying," Sam cut in. "You've said it."

He closed the laptop and looked down at the lid. "I get that you can't trust me, Dean. I do. What I did, from the time you went to Hell, it was one road after another of good intentions that went so far south, I couldn't even see them anymore." He looked across at Dean. "And I didn't take them on. Didn't want to see your disappointment, again."

Dean sat down on the other bed, his face tightening at the rawness that filled Sam's voice.

"I ran. And it got worse. And now," he said slowly. "Now it feels like I've got another chance. But I need to know that at the least, you're not sitting around trying to figure out how to make it work because you think I'm going to fail."

Looking down at the floor, Dean didn't know how to answer him. He wanted to believe that Sam could do it, but Sam had too often taken the easier way, the more expedient way over the right way.

"I took Lucifer into the cage, Dean," Sam said softly. "But I didn't do that alone, I needed your help. Are you going to help with this?"

The silence stretched out between them and Sam looked away, not understanding his brother's doubts. He'd followed Dean since he'd been old enough to walk, old enough to understand that the bigger kid in his life was his protector, his teacher, his confidant and his tormentor, his best friend for most of the years they'd been growing up … his brother. He didn't feel like anything was impossible if Dean believed in it. Maybe that had always been the difference between the two of them.

Aware of the way Sam would take the silence, Dean couldn't give him the answer he wanted. It wasn't just the trust, although he guessed it was a big part of it. It was their history, their family, their life … how was he supposed to help his brother go down a path that could kill him? Even if he trusted Sam to finish the trials, to withstand whatever was coming …

"I don't know," he said finally, looking up. Sam nodded abruptly, turning away.

"Sam."

"Yeah."

Dean hesitated, looking at the set of his brother's shoulders. He didn't know if the anger that had filled Sam had really gone. Didn't know if he would have whatever he said thrown back at him somewhere down the line if it returned. He swallowed what he'd been about to say and stood up, going back to the table.

"You know, once I get this put together, we can't hesitate. If we've got to use it, we use it."

Sam felt his hope slip away, knowing that whatever Dean had wanted to say to him was gone. Dean trusted Dean, and that was all now. He couldn't blame him for it, but it stung him, down deep, that his brother wouldn't back him, wouldn't risk it again. He turned to look at him.

"You mean if we find the witch that's doing this to James," he said, feeling his disappointment transform into irritation at the tone in Dean's voice, the older brother who was preparing him for the hard facts of life tone.

"Or if there is no other witch," Dean clarified, hearing the irritation and shutting away his own.

"Or … it wouldn't be the first free pass we've given, Dean," Sam said, knowing as the words came out of his mouth that the situations weren't the same, weren't comparable in the slightest.

Dean looked down, his mouth twisting slightly as he heard the edge in Sam's voice. "Look, I like James, as much as the next guy, but people are getting ganked here, Sam. Besides, Benny, and that girl, they were forced to be what they are. James chose this."

Under the words, Sam heard the other ones, the unspoken ones. When trust was broken, only time could heal the pieces, he thought. Time to earn it again. Time to prove it again. Fighting with his brother had never gotten him anywhere. In addition to persistent, Dean was stubborn. More so than their father, hard as that was to believe. He wondered if that had come from their mother, that thick streak of stubbornness that never let him give in or give up, kept him going in the face of everything that was thrown at him.

* * *

Sam looked at the suit laid on the bed and shook his head. "No, I'll play Special Agent, you keep your face out of sight and follow up with Portia."

"What? Why?"

"Seven years isn't long enough for the locals to have forgotten what you look like, Dean, and there's no statute of limitation on murder anyway," Sam turned back to the mirror, knotting his tie. "They don't have my picture floating around and I'm not in the database with a red flag."

Dean looked at the suit for a moment and shrugged, picking it up and folding it up again. First perk of the day, he thought.

"You'll need some wheels."

Sam nodded. "I'll rent something … federal looking." He looked at Dean's reflection in the mirror. "Stay in touch and watch yourself."

"Yeah, you too." Dean walked to the door and left the room and a moment later Sam heard the black car's engine turn over, the deep idle chugging as it reversed out and down the drive to the street.

He smoothed the front of the tie down and pulled out his phone, calling a taxi.

* * *

The rental company gave him a bland Ford sedan, silver-grey, a car that would be forgotten the second it passed out of view and he got in, driving down to the precinct shop and parking out the front. Need a federal parking tag too, he thought, making a mental note to let Yavoklevich know when they were done here. It probably wouldn't fly with the Impala, but for occasions like this it would be helpful.

The desk sergeant directed him to Joshua Mankowitz, the tech who was handling the evidence on the cases. Sam introduced himself, noting with only a little amusement the brightening of Joshua's expression as he shook hands with a federal agent.

"I need to see the detective in charge," Sam said, looking around. "And I'd you're your impressions of the scenes."

Joshua nodded, gesturing across the room. "I'll take you. What do you want to know?"

"I heard the vics were all torn up pretty bad," Sam said, following him.

"Like someone shredded them with their bare hands," Joshua said, looking back at him as they passed into another area. Sam glanced around, the bullpen familiar from a hundred other cop stations, bigger, noisier, more modern perhaps.

"Ed!" Joshua lifted his hand as they approached an older man in a dark brown suit, turning from the files he was looking through.

"Ed Stoltz," Joshua said to Sam. "He's lead on the case."

Sam crossed the narrow room to the detective, holding out his hand as Joshua followed him.

"Special Agent Keith," the technician said as the two men shook hands.

"Joshua tells me you don't have a lot to go on," Sam said, looking down at him.

"Yeah. Isolated parts of the city. Vics who meant nothing to nobody," Stoltz said, glancing at the technician and back to Sam.

"Right," Sam said, tucking his notebook into his jacket pocket. "Yeah, well my partner and I took a look at the crime scenes –"

"Things really must be slow at the Bureau," Ed said, with a laugh. "Locations have already been knocked out."

"Well," Sam said, pulling a zip-lock plastic bag from his pocket. "We did manage to find this piece of fabric." He handed the bag to Ed, the frayed piece of white cloth inside half-stained with a dark rust coloured fluid. "Things get overlooked. It happens."

Ed took the bag and looked at it, the laughter gone as he straightened it out.

"Why don't you run the blood? Could be the vic, could be the doer. Let's see if we get a match."

Stoltz handed the bag to Joshua, staring up at the cool expression on the tall agent's face.

"A witness did mention seeing a man in a suit and a white shirt leaving the area," he offered lightly.

"You didn't mention a witness in your report," Sam said, frowning at him. "Anything else?"

"No." Stoltz stared at him. "We'll get back to you on the labwork. So if that's all …"

"Sure, but this witness –" Sam started to say and the detective cut him off.

"That's all that was said, Agent Keith." Stoltz shook his head. "We really don't have a lot here to go on. We'll be in touch."

Sam watched him walk back to the files. Antagonistic. And afraid, he thought. Of what? He'd just met the man but he could feel him raising his defences. Jurisdiction? Worried the fibbies were going to take his collar? Then why pretend that they were at a standstill. Or was that the reason for the brushoff?

He turned away, walking out through the narrow aisles between the cubicles, wondering if how long before he could follow up with Joshua. The tech didn't seem to have any problems with a multi-jurisdictional investigation.

* * *

Portia slid out of the passenger seat gracefully, dress riding up a little on the long thighs and catching Dean's attention. He looked away, focussing on the building next to them.

"What's this place?"

She smiled lazily at him. "Call yourself a hunter and you don't know about Midnight's?"

"We've been too busy to keep up with the social side of things," he said sardonically.

"It's a bar. A safe house. A place where information can be found and exchanged with no danger to the giver or receiver," she said, walking to the graffiti-covered door and knocking once. "It's neutral ground."

The door opened and a small man looked up at her, tilting his head further to one side to look up at Dean. "Password."

"The door to December," Portia said briskly and the man moved aside, opening the door wider.

Dean looked back as the old man closed the door behind them. From the front, the door had looked ordinary, steel but nothing special. Against the back, a locking ring and dozens of bolts layered it, and they moved on their own, the ring turning and the bolts clunking into their holes obediently.

"Neutral for who?" he asked belatedly, catching up and following her through a wide hall and down a set of marble stairs.

"For all of us," Portia said. "Witch and familiar, beast and human and monster and spirit."

They reached the bottom and he looked around a big room, a bar of a black, polished wood, the top inside with an underlit panel of some kind of white material, painted or inlaid with red designs, taking up one wall, sofas and armchairs grouped together around the walls, the centre filled with small tables. The lighting was soft and diffused, a tint of silver to it that made the skin gleam like metal, and quiet music filling the space and masking the details of the conversations around them.

A beautiful girl walked toward them, tall and slender, with smooth pale skin and long, loose hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back. Dean stopped, staring at her as she walked past, his eyes widening a little as he realised that her hair was silver-white, glittering slightly as she passed under the suspended overhead lights.

"Don't stare," Portia hissed at him, her fingers closing around his arm and tugging. He turned away, glancing back again.

"Unicorn," the familiar told him.

"What?"

"She's a unicorn," Portia said a tiny bit more loudly. "I told you, this place is safe for everyone."

"I thought unicorns were horses," he said, stumbling a little as he looked back.

"Almost every magical creature can change its form, Dean," she said impatiently. "I thought you knew about this stuff."

"Apparently not," he muttered to himself, turning back and following her as she threaded her way between the tables. "How did James find you anyway?"

"Not the way it works. The familiar finds the witch," she said lightly. "And they become inseparable."

"I guess a lot of people feel that way about their pets," Dean commented, looking at a group sitting at a table, all four having the same features, the same golden eyes, four faces turning to watch him as he passed. Not at all creepy.

In front of him, Portia stopped and looked up at him, her face still and cold. "I'm not James' pet."

"Well," he said, smiling down at her. "Not all the time."

She stepped close to him, long fingers curling tightly into the lapels of his coat. "Not … ever!"

"Ah …" Dean said, looking around uncomfortably. "Making a kind of a scene here."

"The witch and the familiar form an unbreakable bond. A melding of our souls, entwined, never to be separated," she said, ignoring his comment. "We would die for each other."

Looking down at her, Dean saw the flash of … something … in her eyes again. The same something he'd seen before. Whatever the melding, bonding thing she had with James, he thought, there was something about it that was making her afraid … or ashamed. The look was gone and she released him, stepping back, her expression smoothing out.

"There," she said, looking past him to a sofa grouping against the wall and walking rapidly toward the man who sat alone there.

"Portia," the man said with a slow smile. "Where have you been, luscious thing?"

She smiled coolly at him. "Dean, meet Phillipe leChat. Dean's a Wiccan, from Detroit."

Phillipe eyed him consideringly. "Really?"

Dean smiled politely and edged along the sofa as Portia sat down.

"Spencer here?" Portia asked Phillipe.

"Somewhere," Phillipe said, gesturing to the room languidly.

They both turned to look at Dean as he sneezed suddenly.

"That's weird," Dean said, looking at Portia. "That only happens around cats."

Phillipe smiled a little and looked at the slender woman. "Tell me about James. There's a lot of … buzz … out there."

Portia's smile faded. "All gossip." Feeling Dean's gaze on her, she flicked a glance to him. "The community has a little … attitude … going."

Phillipe leaned forward, lifting a shoulder in a careless shrug. "He brings it on himself, my dear."

"After four years of everyone thinking he could no wrong?" she asked bitingly.

Dean watched the man stretch, frowning at the familiarity of the image, the connection eluding him.

"James isn't stupid, darling. He had to have to known the bloom would fade when everyone knew that he wasn't going to be covering up their mistakes for them." Phillipe turned to look at Dean. "That, in fact, he would go after anyone who made mistakes in this town."

"He didn't change, Phillipe," Portia said coldly. "Everyone else did."

"No." Phillipe looked at his fingernails. "No one changed, they just realised what they'd let in the door. And then … there was you, dearest."

Dean looked from the man to the woman beside him, feeling her stiffen slightly at the innocuous-sounding words. She was rigid, and again a teasing familiarity struck him, of another image, clear and unmistakable this time, a dog rigid before an attack.

"It isn't done, Portia … and you know it."

"I'm sorry," Dean said, looking at him. "What isn't done?"

"Portia."

They turned to see a tall, thin man standing behind them, his face almost cadaverous in the silvery light. The close-set dark grey eyes turned to Dean and he felt a moment's nausea, looking into them, heard a faint whispering voice in his mind … _Nybbas eum tangere_.

"Uh … I'm a Wiccan," he said, dragging his gaze from the man's, looking down distractedly. "From Detroit."

The man looked at him for a moment longer, before closing his eyes briefly and looking back to the woman seated beside him.

"Spencer's an Adept," she told Dean, and he looked back at the man standing next to him, feeling the nausea vanish as suddenly as it had come.

"Oh, okay." He pulled his thoughts back hurriedly. "You ever heard of a spell where a witch can control the actions of another witch?"

"No." Spencer looked down at him, shaking his head slightly. "I've never heard of a thing like that. It would require more power than any witch could possibly derive from it or could wield on their own. I doubt that it's even possible." The witch looked at Portia.

"How's James?"

"Better," she said quietly. "I'll tell him you asked."

He nodded, mouth tightening a little, his face drawn. "Phillipe, it's time we were going."

"Of course," Phillipe said, shifting forward on the sofa and looking at Portia. "Goodnight."

She nodded to him and he turned to look at Dean, mouth lifting in a slow, mocking smile.

"It was so nice to meet you," he said. Dean's eyes widened as the pale brown eyes shifted to feline green, the pupil elongated into a vertical slit, and a deep purr emerged from his chest. The man shifted in an eyeblink, human gone and a large jet-black cat standing on the sofa where he'd been. Spencer dropped his hand to the cat's head, stroking gently.

The adept picked up the cat and walked away, and Dean watched him go, wiping his nose with one hand as he sniffed at the tickle still present. He felt like he'd been inhaling cat hair.

"I knew it."


	31. Chapter 31 All Power Must Be Paid For

**Chapter 31 All Power Must Be Paid For**

* * *

The sharp shrill of his phone grabbed his attention and he pulled it out of his pocket, still sniffling a little.

"Excuse me," he said to Portia, getting up and taking the call. "Yeah."

"_Where are you?"_ Sam's voice was loud on the other end.

"Witch bar," Dean walked a little further from Portia. "Why?"

"_Listen, I just got the labwork back from the blood on James' shirt."_

"And?"

"_Not good,_" Sam said. "_Blood's an exact match to victim number three_."

"That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?"

"_Yeah."_

"Word here is that no one's heard of a spell that can control another witch."

"_Even better."_

"Yeah," Dean said, wetting his lips as a thought occurred to him. "The thing is, that James made a lot of enemies in this 'community' over the last year, Sam. And they're really not the sharing, caring kind of community."

"_So?"_

"So if it's not James, the field could be pretty wide."

"_James said it would take enormous power, right?_" Sam said, thinking back over the conversation. "_So you can rule out the low-levels and the dabblers and the hangers'-on._"

"Yeah, but even so," Dean said, looking around at the people – or what looked like people – sitting at the tables and bar around him. "We can't exactly ask everyone to hand over their credentials."

"No. But if Portia makes it impossible for James to leave the apartment tonight, we'll know if it's him or not, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

* * *

The chains rattled as she lifted them up from the bed frame, her hands burning at the touch of the cold metal. She hid the pain from the man lying in the bed, slipping each pin through the holes in the manacles, checking that they were in and they were tight.

"I hate doing this to you," she said as she fastened the thick band around his wrist.

"It's okay, really," James said, looking at it. The iron, across the blood vessels of wrist and ankle, cut off the pervasive double sight he'd slowly gotten to used over the years, the ability to feel the movement of the earth in its orbit, the stars in theirs, the power of the sun and moon and the steady breathing of every living creature over the face of the world. Energy was infinite and it had fed him since he'd opened himself to it, a secondary skin encasing him that he drank from without thought, breathed in without effort.

He looked at her as she fastened the chains on the other side.

"We don't have to," she told him, looking back at him. "They don't have to find out."

"Portia," he said very gently. "If I believe I'm innocent, then I have to do the right thing. And if I'm not innocent, then … I have to do the right thing."

Moving beside him, she leaned close to him, feeling her heart expand with her feelings. He couldn't do it, she thought, not this man, this man who'd spent his life trying to do the right thing. It didn't matter what it cost him, she knew. He wouldn't take a life.

"We're as one, you and I," she said softly, looking into his eyes.

The desire that filled them surprised her. And lit the same fire inside, a desperate, explosive fire that common-sense and the rulings of the shadow world in which they existed couldn't dampen or put out. He'd turned away when he'd blocked her out, and she'd begun to wonder if she would ever feel his soul rise to meet hers again.

Hesitantly she touched his lips with her own and felt him tense against her, his eyelids fluttering shut. She felt his will struggle to overcome the feelings that shifted and fluxed through him and she waited, wanting that closeness again, that deep, deep intimacy between them, but not unless he wanted it too, with all his heart.

When he opened his eyes, she had her answer, and she kissed him deeply, his feelings expanding to mesh with hers, the way it had always been with them, mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to soul, body to body. At these times she was only ever a woman, and he was only ever a man and the world fell away, unimportant, unrecognised, lost in a passion that seemed as infinite as the energy flows on which they drew.

James groaned, pulling against the iron as her mouth moved over him, teasing pleasure from well-known wells, building an arousal that frightened him in its intensity, in how much he needed to feel her, how deeply he'd been starved of the comfort of her touch. He felt her heat and his back arched involuntarily, then he felt her enclose him and every wall dissolved, blown away, blown apart, his mind seeking hers.

Portia's eyes flew open as she felt him again, the rush of his soul sweeping through her own, his mind overlapping hers, like walking from a dark room into a world of colour and light. She stared at the images that filled her, blood and rent flesh, broken bodies and staring eyes, and blood, and blood, feeling him, seeing him. But nothing else. He thrust into her and her body shook around him, muscle and nerve igniting and in her mind she saw only the kills, only the deaths, nothing else.

* * *

Sam looked up as Dean's phone beeped, brow wrinkling in query.

"It's from Portia," Dean said tightly. "Come quickly."

Sam grabbed the bottle Dean'd made up to kill a witch, and hurried out to the car.

"You think he's gone darkside?" Sam asked as they got in and Dean started the engine.

"I don't know," he said, turning around to reverse out. "Maybe he killed someone while he was chained up."

"How?"

"Sam, he's a witch."

"Chained in iron," Sam reminded him. "Nothing he can do can past that."

* * *

Portia opened the door before Sam could raise his hand to knock, her face filled with an excitement that seemed to be part fear, part relief, part something else entirely.

"It's not him," she said as she closed it behind him. "Definitely, not him."

"How do you know?" Dean stopped in the living room, looking at her.

For a long moment she didn't answer and he looked past her to Sam, one brow rising. Sam shook his head a little, waiting.

"Tonight …" she started softly, her voice strengthening as she looked up at them. "There is never supposed to be a physical component between a familiar and the witch with whom they bond."

Dean flicked a glance at Sam. "But there is, between you and James?"

"Yes."

"For the last four weeks, we haven't," she said, picking her words carefully. "It was one of the ways in which he shut me out, blocked me out."

"That changed tonight?" Sam guessed, looking at her. She nodded.

"And every block collapsed," she said. "I saw it all, saw every murder, every victim, how they died and where … in his thoughts, in his memories."

Dean frowned. "Not convincing me here."

She looked toward the bedroom. "In his mind, there are only the memories of the actual events, nothing else."

"Like a movie?" Sam asked.

She looked back at him. "Exactly. No planning, no forethought, no motivation for choosing those people or those places. Just like a fragment of a movie."

Dean nodded. "Planted there."

"Yes."

"But his friend, the adept, says no witch can do that," Dean said.

"He said he'd never heard of it," Portia looked at him pleadingly. "Someone might have known of it, someone might have created such a spell."

Sam exhaled softly. "We need more info."

"Yeah." He looked over his shoulder toward the bedroom. "James up?"

She nodded and they followed her in.

"She told you?" the witch asked. He was still manacled to the bed, the chains clanking softly as he moved a little.

Dean nodded. "You said it would take a lot of juice to work a spell like that, James. So what are the options?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I'm still an acolyte, really, Dean. You need to ask someone more knowledgeable."

"We asked your friend, Spencer." Dean glanced at Portia. "He said he'd never heard it."

James frowned. "That's … Spencer an Adept, he should know of a few ways to tap into greater power, greater strength."

"There's another side to this question, James," Sam said. "If someone had the power and the spell to control another witch, to make them a puppet or put thoughts into their heads, what would they gain by doing it to you?"

"I don't know that either," James said helplessly. "I've made a few enemies, a lot of the community thought that when I became enlightened, they had a cop in their pocket, someone on the inside of the regular world who could clean up after them. They were … disappointed … when they found out that wasn't going to happen."

"Disappointed enough to try and frame you for murders?"

He blinked. "I wouldn't have thought so, but it's possible, I guess."

Dean looked at his brother. "We need an update on what the cops are doing."

Sam nodded. "What are you going to do?"

"Try and find what gives a witch of any level that kind of juice, I guess," Dean said, looking back at James.

"You need to see Drexel," James said to Portia. "If there's anything in the community about this, he'll know it."

She nodded. "Yes, you're right. I'll arrange a meeting."

Dean looked at James. "Drexel?"

"He's a natural talent, a sport really," James said, his eyes half-closed. "Didn't want to train so he's never moved up in the ranks, although I suspect he'd be powerful if he did take the training." He forced his eyelids open. "But, he floats around the fringes of the community and no one really pays him much attention. He hears … everything."

Dean' mouth lifted on one side. "He's a snitch."

James smiled too, nodding. "Yeah, he's a snitch."

* * *

Sam walked down through the bullpen, his gaze shifting from side to side as he searched for Stoltz or Joshua. He came to the end and looked down the corridor, stopping as he saw both come out of a room at the end.

"Gentlemen," he called, walking down to them. Stoltz pulled the door closed behind him as he got closer.

"Still investigating this crappy little case?" Stoltz asked him, glancing at Joshua. "I'm awed the Bureau has so much time on its hands."

"Four grisly murders in less than three weeks," Sam said cheerfully, looking down at the file tucked under Joshua's arm. The name on the file was James Frampton. "Not such a low-ranking case as all that, Detective."

"Cases like this frequently go cold, Agent," Stoltz said. "As I'm sure you're aware. Just not enough to keep them floating."

"Sure," Sam agreed readily. "So you haven't found anything new?"

"No, and it's drifting toward the back burners, Agent," Stoltz admitted. "We just don't have the manpower."

Sam nodded understandingly. "It must have been tough to lose a valuable resource like Lieutenant Frampton, detective." He saw Stoltz's face close up, the small eyes narrow further. The comment was indeed the right button, he thought. "See, he and I caught a case a while back. He's a hell of a cop."

Stoltz pulled in a deep breath, his hands disappearing into his pockets as he shifted his weight. "Well, he's not lost to me, he's on leave."

"I remember he said he was the youngest guy here to ever make lieutenant," Sam pressed a little harder, watching the detective stiffen slightly. "Must have made a few waves."

"Nah," Stoltz said flatly. "This place is run like a dog sled. No stars, just grunts, one mutt goes lame, another pops up, slides through the slush. Agent." He walked down the hall, not waiting for an answer and Sam looked after him thoughtfully.

He stepped to the door and tried it, but it was locked. C-110, he thought. Not the easiest of things to do, break into a locked room in the middle of a police station. He wondered if his brother would have a plan B for this one.

* * *

Dean got out of the car and looked around the parking lot. It was on the south-eastern side of the city, an area that was mostly industrialised. Far from the community but probably not out of reach of their enhanced vision, he thought sourly. Maybe it was warded, since Drexel had chosen the place, not them.

The small red car blatted as it came through the entrance, the noisy engine echoing from the walls. It pulled up in front of them and a young man got out, scruffy, unkempt, forgettable, Dean thought, looking at him.

"Drexel," Portia said as he walked up to them. "This is Dean."

"Wiccan. Detroit," Drexel said sourly, nodding to him. "I heard."

Dean repressed a smile as Drexel turned back to Portia. "Here's the deal. No word at all anywhere of any witch hexing another one."

"You sure there's not any kind of spell?" Dean asked him.

"There are spells to do whatever you want, so long as you're good enough to think of them, Detroit," Drexel snapped at him. "But that's the catch, not many truly creative witches out there; most of them use what they've always used, not used to thinking in five dimensions."

Dean tilted his head a little as he looked at him. "But you could come up with one, right?"

Drexel shrugged. "Sure, my problem is that I don't have the juice it would need."

"Could you get it?"

"A concert might be able to do it," Drexel said slowly, thinking about the possibilities. "You'd need everyone to be absolutely attuned because the blowback on a spell like that would be fatal if one of them failed at the crucial moment."

Dean glanced at Portia who shook her head. "No, don't think it's a group acting together. What else?"

"Well, of course, you could trap a demon, tap into its power," Drexel laughed, raising a mocking brow at Portia.

Dean felt as if he'd been asleep and had just woken up. _Crap_. Of course a demon would have the power. "You mean sell your soul to a demon for the power?"

The younger man snorted. "Jesus, no, what the hell would you do that for? Spend an eternity in Hell?"

Dean blinked. "Then how're you going to get the mojo from the demon?"

"Spell and trap," Drexel said, frowning at him. "You Wiccans don't know dick, do you?"

"Nope, not dick," Dean said, taking a step closer to him as his patience began to thin. "Educate me."

Drexel glanced at Portia. She nodded quickly. "Usual shit, man. You need the name of the demon, some hellspawn powerful enough to pull on the souls for what you want. Trap it and spell the trap to drag the power through the demon from Hell and into yourself."

"Huh," Dean said. "Just like that."

"Well, no one's used that kind of spell for about a hundred years, but I understand it went real well for the Russians when they took down the Romanovs," Drexel said dryly. "It's kind of risky. Demons don't take all that kindly to being held indefinitely in traps."

"Got that right," Dean muttered. He looked at Drexel. "How do I find the demon if someone's trapped it?"

"Try a pendulum," Drexel said, shrugging. "James knows how."

"Right."

* * *

Dean looked up as Sam came into James' living room.

"Think we've got ourselves a –" Sam started.

"You know you can trap a demon –" Dean said, stopping as he realised he was talking over the top of his brother.

Sam's brow creased up. "You go, yours sounds more interesting."

"Drexel, the sport snitch of the witching community, told me that a witch can trap a demon and use their power without having to sell their souls to do it."

Sam nodded slowly. "More than enough power for most spells."

"Yup." Dean picked up the glass of whiskey on the table in front of him. "Got the spell too, I think." He gestured at the piles of notes and papers and books in front of him. "Been going through some of Bobby's stuff, there's a spell to transfer images from mind to mind. Yours?"

"Our detective Stoltz has been building a case against James, I think," Sam said, looking at the papers on the desk. "He said that the case is going cold but he handed a thick file to the tech that's been running the backend – file was marked James Frampton."

"Personal gripe?"

"As it turns out, yeah," Sam said, pulling out his notebook. "Stoltz was the dick in charge of the case we helped James with, and he was passed over when James got the guy."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

"Alright, he's got enough motive to want to take whatever he can get on James, but what about the other side? The witch who's trapped a demon and wants to use it to put James out of the picture … I'm not seeing anyone outstanding for that part."

"Me either," Sam admitted. "It has to be someone knowledgeable, someone with a lot of power themselves."

"Too many contenders in this town, and none of them seem to have a really personal grudge against James, just a general feeling of pissyness that he's a cop and not covering for them."

"Can we find the demon?" Sam looked at him.

"Drexel suggested a pendulum, said James would know how to key it," Dean said, putting the empty glass back on the table. "I haven't asked him yet."

"We need to find out about that case as well." Sam rubbed his forehead. "Witchcraft or not, if they get enough leads, they'll arrest him and throw away the key."

"Right." Dean looked at him. "But breaking into a police station in this town … really not something I want to do any time soon."

"Talk to James?" Sam suggested.

"Why the hell not," Dean said acerbically, getting up and walking into the bedroom.

* * *

"Heard a little of that," James said quietly from the bed. "I didn't consider the demon side of things. Not many of us would turn to that kind of power."

Dean made a face. "Nearly all the witches we've met go for the demons first. I should've thought it straight away."

"It's a risky proposition, even with a trap," James said, looking at them. "No matter how you come by it, all power must be paid for. The witches who use demons pay with their souls. We – my kind – pay for it with own energy, putting back what we use. Even the Left Hand path demands payment. You can't get away with it."

"Someone is," Dean said.

James shook his head. "It might be deferred but the price still has to be paid, one way or the other." He looked at Sam. "You need to go looking for something?"

"We've done it before, with help," Dean said. "But yeah, locked room in a building full of cops, twenty-four seven, seems like ghosting in and out might be the answer."

"You're going to have to take off the jewellery," James said, lifting his hands. "None of us can travel with it on."

Sam nodded, going to the side of the bed as Dean walked around it. They slipped the pins free from the manacles and pushed the chains under the bed.

"What do we do?"

"Sit down here, to either side of me. Close your eyes. Be quiet," James said, tipping his head back and putting a hand on each of their shoulders as they sat beside him. He murmured the simple incantation that lifted his mind and soul free of the flesh, his fingers tightening on the men to both sides, dragging their minds along with him.

Astral projection, out of body experience, bilocation, fetch, far viewer, far seer; the technique had a lot of names and had been in practice for more than five thousand years, at least according to some, Dean knew. He'd done it on his own when he'd been dying in a hospital, dodging a beautiful and well-meaning reaper. Pamela had helped them the second time, sending them out and guarding their bodies, bringing them back to find her dying. The third time he'd gone to a doc, near-death being the quickest way to get out, go and talk to the entity he'd needed to see.

It wasn't like any of those times, Dean thought incoherently as images flashed through his mind, a Flash-speed journey across town, into the precinct building, through the bullpen and down a white corridor. It was disorienting and he struggled to remember the stop-start images that flooded into him, seeing the detective working on the computer, the technician with the file open beside him, loading security camera footage onto the screen in front of him, the long pinboard with the victims' details laid out in a linear fashion. He couldn't feel James, couldn't feel Sam, couldn't feel himself, just the images, blinking past almost too quickly to register and then a feeling of falling and a slam against his abdomen when he landed, inside his body, breath exploding from his lungs.

"Shit!"

"Crap!" Sam's voice came from the other side of James.

James lurched forward, doubled over as he tried to absorb everything he'd just seen.

"Stoltz, he's building a case against me," James said, shaking his head. "Phillipe – there was a sketch and a statement … security footage …"

"What?!" Portia stared at him. "Goddamn him, I'll rip his guts out."

"Okay, wait a minute, take it easy," Dean got up. "James, where do you think you're –"

The witch pulled in a deep breath, the spell automatic, drawing power from everything around him. He swung the energy toward the hunters, imagining it as a solid force and Dean and Sam were lifted and flung back against the wall behind the bed, the plaster dented where they hit, nightstand and lamps crashing down as they fell onto them.

"James, don't," Portia said, stepping in front of him as he looked past her. "We'll do this together."

"No. We won't," James said looking down at her. "It's not safe for you, our time is over."

"Standing beside you is my duty, my choice –"

"No." He looked at her, his eyes hard. "The ceiling is coming down on me, but you can still get out."

"James, no."

"Go," he said, staring at her. "I command you, Portia – GO!"

She staggered back as if he'd hit her, backing out of the room, unable to stop the compulsion that the order had raised inside of her. Stuttering down the stairs, she fought against it, grabbing the walls, the doorframes, the banisters as she moved by them, her vision blurring but her feet taking inexorably out of the apartment, out of the building.

* * *

Silence. Pain. The appalling reek of spilled aftershave, somewhere nearby.

Dean opened his eyes and lifted his head, wincing as the movement brought another deep throb to the lump at the side of his skull.

"Sam?"

There was a thump from the other side of the bed, and he levered himself into a sitting position, grabbing the bed post and pulling himself up.

"Sam?" He could see his brother's long frame, scrunched into the corner, relief slipping in as he saw Sam's legs straighten, his arm lift and heard the low groan.

"Yeah."

"C'mon, get up, James has gone, Portia too."

"Crap."

Dean snorted. "You remember how to do a pendulum spell?"

"Just the one that Bobby used to find Lilith," Sam said, rolling onto his side and getting to his feet, pressing gingerly at the tenderness along his ribs.

"That'll do, I guess," Dean said. "Pretty sure the demon we're looking for is Nybbas."

"How do you know that?" Sam looked at him.

"When I met Spencer, something whispered to me, I didn't realise what it was at the time, didn't realise it was him at the time," Dean said distractedly, sweeping the dining room clear and grabbing the map of the city from the coffee table, spreading it over the table. "It was Latin, Nybbas touch him."

"I thought Spencer was James' friend?"

"So did James," Dean said, looking around the apartment. "Where would a witch keep their gear?"

* * *

"Password?"

"In Hell's foul light," James snapped, pushing the door open and striding down the hall to the stairs. He stopped as he reached the bottom, his gaze shifting fast around the room. There. The familiar was at the bar, hunched over a glass.

James crossed the space and grabbed the man by the collar and waistband, lifting him high over his head and slamming down onto the bar's underlit surface, uncaring of the cracks that crazed the fine white crystal where Phillipe's head and shoulders and heels landed.

"James, what are you doing?" Phillipe looked up at him, feeling the witch's hand close tighter around his throat.

"Why are you telling lies about me?"

"I'm not," Phillipe said quickly. "I wouldn't."

"I saw the evidence room," James snarled at him. "I saw the police sketch, based on an eye-witness account!"

"Please … don't," Phillipe said to him.

"Tell me why," James said to him, rage pounding in his head. That's all he wanted to know … why. Why?

"I had no choice," Phillipe said.

"What does that mean?"

"My master made me," the familiar said slowly, dragging in small sips of air as James' fingers flexed around his windpipe.

"Liar! You're a coward and a liar!" James said. "Spencer's my friend."

"A direct command," Phillipe said, his eyes pleading. "Please … don't hurt my face."

James looked down at him, his hand uncurling from the man's throat as he pulled back a little. "I'm not interested in –"

Phillipe's neck snapped in front of him, his head almost at a right angle to his shoulders. James stared down at the reddened skin where the bone pressed in disbelief.

"He was always spineless," Spencer said from the other side of the room. James turned to look at him. "Now, literally."

The adept looked at James emotionlessly, as he stepped back from the bar and turned to face him.

"It was you?" James asked unwillingly. "You were behind all this?"

Spencer's shoulder lifted in the barest of shrugs. "I humbly accept credit."

"You made me think I was a killer," James said, pacing the witch as he walked away. He couldn't believe, didn't want to believe that Spencer had contrived the plan to destroy him. The witch had been his mentor, his guide, the one person in the community he'd truly trusted. "Ed Stoltz put you up to this – he found out what you are, blackmailed you …"

Spencer smiled derisively as he walked slowly toward the stairs. "You're not using your thinking cap, Jimmy." He stopped and turned around, looking at James. "It was actually crucial that he didn't believe in the occult. I'd say he's built quite a solid case, don't you agree?"

"I don't understand," James said, staring at him.

Spencer smiled. "James, you stand on the cusp of a great destiny and you don't even see it, do you? You have power, you have that … that spark of creativity that means that you will be able to further our studies, not merely work spells but imagine them, move the worlds and change the histories … and you haven't yet discovered that about yourself."

He looked down for a moment. "I've seen it. Seen what you will do. If you live."

"Spencer, I'm – you're much more powerful –"

"Now, yes," the witch said, nodding. "In the future, no. You have the power, you have the future, and you have Portia by your side."

"What's she got to do with this?"

"She was supposed to come to me," Spencer spat suddenly at him. "You weren't supposed to get everything!"

"I had no choice in that – she had no choice in that! That bonding isn't chosen –"

"But I do have a choice, James. Life and death, over you, and anyone else who gets in the way." The witch looked up at him, his skin paling further as he pulled power through his flesh and nerves and soul. "And it's time to die."

* * *

The pendulum stopped over a warehouse, not far from the airport. Dean looked at Sam.

"You cut that demon loose, and stay the hell out of its way," Dean said, picking up the knife and sliding it into the sheath in his jacket. "I'll head over to Midnight's and see anyone's seen James."

"Dean, we're counting on this thing leading us to Spencer," Sam said doubtfully.

"It will," Dean said, smiling humourlessly at his brother. "If it hadn't been for you, Ruby'd've come straight after me when I left her in that trap, and I wasn't even using her for power."

"Don't get killed," Sam said, turning to go.

"You either," Dean agreed, heading for the fire escape and the car.

* * *

Sam turned the rental into the parking lot of the warehouse, feeling a sudden drop in temperature as he parked and got out. Wind spiralled around the empty lot, picking up dust and litter, swirling it around and dropping it. He walked to the postern door and picked the lock, slipping inside and putting his back against the wall while he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness inside. A moaning noise filled the space and he looked around, seeing a brighter patch against the darkness to one side.

He walked slowly toward it. On the floor a big circle had been drawn, in blood, he thought, looking at the dark brownish-red lines. It was empty, but the air moved inside of it, shifting this way and that. He turned his head slightly, looking at the circle from the corner of his eye, and saw black eyes gleaming at him, the glint of a long translucent tooth blinking once and vanishing.

Dean'd been right, he thought, keeping his eyes on the floor, as he tried to work out the best place to cut the circle and be able to take cover. The demon in the trap was powerful and old and he had to hope that it would want vengeance against the witch that had trapped it there rather than a crunchy snack on the way. He could feel its attention on him, an insidious hunger scratching inside his organs, alien images not quite visible but pressing against his mind. And anger, like a furnace, snaking along his nerves, not quite touching him, not quite able to get to him but skittering against his consciousness nonetheless.

He knelt on the other side of the circle, and looked down at the line in front of him, pulling in a deep breath. Then he scratched the blood from the concrete floor.

* * *

Dean pushed at the door, looking at the metal door jamb, ripped apart where the locks had been forced out. _Not good_, he thought, slipping inside and pulling out the bottle that contained the kill-witch liquid.

Inside he could hear a voice, rising up the stairs, too low to make out the words. He couldn't hear anything else. _Also not good_.

He moved down the stairs silently, keeping to the side that was hidden from the room, listening as the conversation below got clearer. He could hear the bewilderment in James' voice, the cold condescension in Spencers and he crossed the floor behind the columns, his fingers wrapping around the lighter and pulling it out of his jacket.

James saw him and threw back his head, dragging power through himself and lashing it at Spencer. The adept held up his hand and Dean watched the blue lightning crawl across the air just in front of him for a moment before it dissipated.

"The Wiccan from Detroit," Spencer said, smiling slightly. He flung a hand back and Dean felt himself lifted and thrown across the room, his hand gripping the bottle hard as he twisted in the air to hit the wall with his back.

"You want a shot at the title, James?" Spencer looked back at him. "You would've had it one day, but not yet and now not ever."

He lifted his hands, his eyes rolling back as he called on the demon's power, feeling it fill him up with rage and hatred and pain and the molten raw energy of the souls of the damned. The power flowed from his fingers, wrapping around James and lifting him into the air as tendrils broke free and slid into the younger man's body, his back bowing as he arched back in agony.

Getting to his feet, Dean flicked the lighter, the flame wavering as he strode forward. Spencer looked over his shoulder as Dean raised the bottle, the witch's hand snapping back and locking the hunter in a spell of immobility.

Dean stared at him, unable to move, every part of him paralysed and held with a strength that couldn't have come from any human. He could see and hear and feel. He just couldn't do anything else.

"It's not only James' head I can get inside," Spencer said with a smile.

And the images came.

* * *

Heat. Wind. Screams. Excruciating torment. Unending pain. The demon passed out of the circle and stopped in front of him, a flickering not-quite-visible entity of shadow and light that defied his eyes and hurt his mind.

Sam flung up his right arm in front of him as the demon reached out for him, and he heard the low hiss, fury and heat and frustration in the sound as it drew away, the wind gathering into a twisting spiral and bursting out through the big freight door at the side of the warehouse, the high-pitched squeal of metal rent through filling the warehouse.

Lowering his arm, Sam looked at it for a long moment. It'd wanted him, he knew without a doubt. But it hadn't been able to touch him. He got to his feet, not knowing what that meant. He pushed the thought aside. The demon was on its way, possibly to his brother, and he started to hurry for the car, jumping the ripped up metal edges of the big door, seeing the wind twisting away to the north.

* * *

_His mother and the house in Kansas. Fire spilling over the ceiling. Screaming soundlessly above him. Sam and endless clicking of the empty gun, his brother's face so hard and cold. His father, smiling at him, the knowledge of what he'd done. What he'd done to save him, ripping at his heart. The hellhound's claws, digging through him, through his guts and slicing through his hands as he tried to protect himself. Hell. The wink of a razor. The pull of the rack. Silver eyes staring into his. Voices that hurt to listen to. The wet slop of falling flesh and the mind-numbing shrieks of the souls on the table. Laughter that emerged from no throat. Pain flowing through him like a river. Despair that dragged him down, pulling him deeper into the darkness. Sam, his face hard and bitter, standing above him, choosing someone else. Sam, eyes glittering as the blood dripped from the vampire's wrist against his mouth._

The wind roared into the room, lifting the tables and sofas and chairs and pitching them in every direction, flinging hard against the walls, fabric shredded and frames splintering into matchwood with the force. Spencer dropped to his knees, his eyes rolled up in his head as he shouted the incantation against the blinding power of it, his throat working as he tried to override the vibrating shriek in his ears. A slit appeared along one cheek, the flesh opened to the bone, his blood sucked from the wound to spatter across the ceiling. He shuddered.

James fell, the pain gone from his body, landing crumpled on the floor. Against the bar, Dean stumbled forward, the images disappearing from his mind, as he was released from the spell that held him. He looked at the witch in the centre of the whirlwind, seeing more and more thin cuts appear over his face and through his clothing.

One shot at this, he thought, dropping the bottle and dragging the knife from his jacket. One shot while the demon was preoccupied with torturing its ex-captor. He rose to his feet, and ran, feeling the wind pluck at him, lifting him off his feet mid-stride as he got closer.

Jump.

_Now._

He jumped, twisting high in the air as below the witch exploded, blood and tissue and bone and fabric spreading out, caught by the wind and splattered against the hard surfaces of the room. He closed his eyes as the spray hit his face, and swung down with the knife, slicing through the yielding force of the wind, feeling the blade bite into something solid somewhere deep in the centre as he fell into it toward the floor.

For a moment the volume and speed of the twisting air rose to unbearable levels, then it was gone, imploding into itself, the crack of the air coming together where it had been simultaneous with the thud as Dean landed on his side in the middle of the floor.

Sam skidded down the stairs, staring around at the complete devastation of the room, Portia running down behind him and pushing past as she ran to James.

Dean wiped his hand over his face, and looked at the liquid covering it in disgust. James got unsteadily to his feet and walked over to him, his arm around Portia, holding out his free hand and taking the hunter's and hauling him to his feet.

"What the hell was that?" The witch looked at the knife.

Dean looked down at Ruby's knife, lifting it, his mouth curving up. "Demon-Be-Gone."

"Handy."

"You have no idea."

* * *

"You sure you don't want to stay and fight this?" Dean asked James, standing in the parking lot of the motel.

"We can help you," Sam added, looking from James to Portia.

"Nah, Spencer was right. Ed Stoltz has built enough of a case against me to make life hell for a long time," James said, looking down at the woman beside him. "And the community here wants no part of us."

"We'll start over," Portia said, looking at Sam. "We're used to it. It's the way it's always been. For all of us."

She smiled at Sam. "I'll miss you," she told him, turning to get in the car and looking back over her shoulder at Dean. "Maybe even you."

"I like dogs," Dean said defensively.

"No, you really don't," Portia said gently, getting into the car. She changed into her dog form as James walked around the car, sitting very upright in the front seat.

They watched the car pull away into the night and Sam sighed. "You wanna head home?"

Dean's mouth lifted slightly. "Yeah, I think so."

* * *

_**I-70 W, Missouri**_

The windshield showed a field of diamonds with the headlights of every oncoming car, in between the regular sweeps of the wipers. Dean's gaze was focussed on the road, his hands keeping the black car between the lines without thought, his senses submerged in the sounds and feel of the join between vehicle and the concrete road they flew along.

Trust was a strangely fragile thing. At one time, his trust in his brother, his father, had been so strong he couldn't have conceived of ever losing it, brushing the slight bends and cracks it'd taken aside, secure in the knowledge that they'd heal, reform, become stronger. Then, one day, it'd been shattered. Still he'd picked up the pieces and patched it together again. Until the next time, and then the next. There was nothing left to put back now. A million pieces, most of which were missing for good, and no framework left to say, yes, I can still feel this.

But trust wasn't essential. At least, not to what had to be done, he thought, staring at the road and hearing his brother's breathing next to him. Only will was essential. Their lives had been pulled apart and shredded so many times it was a kind of miracle that either of them could get back up, start all over. But they'd done it. Sometimes apart. But mostly together.

Was it habit now, he wondered, that held them? Did it matter? Whatever the bond was it was still there. It just wasn't what it had been.

* * *

Sam leaned against the cold glass, his eyes absenting tracking the raindrops as they flew past, smeared in elongated lines over the window. The job had been … too evocative, he thought. Brought up too many things that neither of them could talk or think about too much.

Trust. Loyalty. Family. Those were Dean's foundation stones. He'd fucked over all of them at one point or another, he thought wearily, thinking he was doing the right thing, wanting to be doing the right thing, drifting from the path. He'd sworn to save Dean and he'd failed and the pain of that loss had unleashed something that he still didn't know how to deal with, not really. He'd thought he wanted normality, a good life with a partner and a routine and the gratifyingly boring problems that everyone faced, but he'd been wrong about that as well. When she'd offered it to him, he'd been afraid. Afraid that he would disappear in that life, not knowing himself, or anyone else, not trying … even if it meant failing … trying and getting up and trying again.

_Starting all over._

He didn't know if he was a good man or not. But he couldn't sit by and do nothing. Not anymore. Couldn't exchange safety for freedom. Couldn't believe in himself, knowing what he knew, and running and hiding from it.

He didn't think Dean would ever trust him again. But worse than that, he thought that perhaps his brother would never trust anyone else again, that deep, well-hidden seam of caring gradually eroded away until he proved himself right. No light at the end of tunnel because he'd never allow himself to feel, to be close to others again.

Time was the only thing that could heal wounds like that. And they had no time. From the moment Jessica had been murdered, they'd had no time to stop and think and heal at all. He could blame his choices on that factor, he supposed. It wouldn't change anything. If anything, it made it worse, that he'd been running head-long into choices that had almost erased him, had broken his brother, had set the world on a path to annihilation.

He'd told Dean that he could show him the light, he thought, closing his eyes. He didn't know if that was true. Didn't know if Dean would let him, even if he could find a way. Didn't know if it was too late. He wished he'd never said it. He couldn't fail his brother again. Couldn't.

* * *

_You can't keep looking back_, Dean told himself. Can't keep looking and hoping that something changed, that it happened different from the way it had. Even with what they were facing, they were still alive, there was still a future, maybe not much of one, but still there as long as they were drawing breath. The past, all the milestones that he could see, back and back and back, that was just pain and mistakes and failures and he'd never find a way forward if he kept trying to go back.

He had good memories, he knew. Some damned fantastic memories, of friends and family, of feeling at peace with himself and his life, of being high as a kite on the knowledge that he was good at what he did. None in the last few years, he acknowledged, a little wryly. But they were there. He'd looked back, trying to see what he could've done differently, how he could have changed what had happened, how it all turned out. There wasn't much he could change. Wasn't much he'd do differently, if the chance came to do it all again. The riddle remained, unanswerable and incomplete.

What he could do was to make sure that Sam had the best possible chance of succeeding at this. Maybe this was why he'd been raised, maybe this was his work, to make sure that the gates were closed and the hellspawn were locked down there forever. He wouldn't be out of a job even if they succeeded, he thought. Eve's children and the dead who couldn't or wouldn't move on would always be there, darkness would still come every night. The hunt would never be over, but saving people … going back to that … feeling that again … that would make it worth getting up in the mornings, wouldn't it?

He thought of Caleb and Rufus, of Bobby and his father and Pastor Jim, and those memories were good, warming him and reminding him that a long, long time ago, he'd loved this life. He didn't know exactly when that had stopped, when he'd gotten tired and had begun to want it to end so he could rest, but he thought it was sometime around the time that he'd lost nearly all of them. And every loss since then had felt like another hammer blow. The realisation that he couldn't do normal, even when nothing was after him or anyone he might with. Civilian life wasn't something he could fit into and that had hurt every bit as much as every other loss, the abandonment of that dream.

Didn't mean that there was no future, he reminded himself. Just meant that it didn't look like apple pie.

"_I'm what you've got to look forward to, if you survive, kid. But you won't."_

_I will, old man_, he thought. _I haven't finished yet_.

* * *

"Sam, I've been thinking," Dean said quietly as they crossed into Kansas. "I was wrong."

Sam turned his head, his brow creasing up a little as he tried to think of what Dean was referring to. "What, about James? Dude, we were both ready to gank the guy."

"No, that's not what I meant," Dean said, glancing at him and back to the road. "Back there, when Spencer had me, he screwed with my head. I saw … Mom, and when she died, and … when I look back at what our family's been through, what happened to our friends, seeing all that … pain … I realised that the only way we made through it all was by hanging together."

Sam heard something beneath Dean's words, something in his voice, something crying out from the inside of him. He looked at his brother's profile, sharp and tight against the rain-spattered window behind him.

"We fuck it up, from time to time," Dean continued. "I've fucked it up more times than I can count, thinking that –" He glanced at his brother and stopped. "I know that. But this deal … locking up those sons of bitches in the furnace, it's too important to keep thinking that way, man."

He pulled in a deep breath. "So, if you say you're good, then that's it, I'm with you, a hundred percent."

Sam stared at him for a moment. He wasn't sure what to say, wasn't sure what to feel about that. He drew in a breath, feeling an odd pressure down in his lungs, forcing the words past it. "I'm good."

The pressure increased slightly, forcing a cough as his body tried to eject the material in his air passages. The cough sounded deep, phlegmy, and he looked down at his hand, seeing the glint of red on one knuckle. The sight shocked him and he wiped his mouth, glimpsing the red on his fingertips where they'd touched his lips.

It's nothing, he told himself. Just … just nothing. It was a lie and he knew it but the alternative was … he couldn't fail again. _Lying to your brother, now, not a good way to start_, an astringent voice remarked in his mind.

_I'll tell him_, Sam promised himself. _If it gets worse. I'll tell him._


	32. Chapter 32 Of Fire and Knowledge

**Chapter 32 Of Fire and Knowledge**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Dean stopped in the hallway as he heard his brother coughing in the bathroom. It was the third night in a row that Sam had been up in the very early hours of the morning, the cough deep and harsh, going on for minutes. He moved away when he heard the tap running, brows drawn down as he headed for the stairs.

He wasn't sure when it had started, but he'd seen the first bloodied tissue in the trash two days after they'd gotten back from Missouri, half buried under scrunched balls of notes Sam had been making on the books from the apothecary shelves. More concerning was that his brother wasn't mentioning it … at all.

Going down the stairs, the latest batch of histories under one arm, he knew why. Sam was scared, and as was the Winchester way, he didn't talk about what he was scared of any more than his father or his brother spoke of it. And that scared Dean.

He dumped the books on the table and went through the shelves, looking for more to take to his room and plough through in the deepest watches of the night. He wondered if there were any cross references in the apothecary to what was happening to his brother – some kind of reaction to the trials, perhaps, or … something. The scowl returned and he stacked the books at the end of the table, heading down the hall to make a fresh pot of coffee. It was three-thirty, that was an okay time to start the day.

* * *

Sam leaned over the sink, rinsing his mouth and spitting the pale pink water out, his stomach hitching up a little with the taste of blood. He turned off the tap and looked into the mirror, seeing the shadows around his eyes, the waxiness of his skin. It was getting worse, he thought bleakly.

He didn't feel like eating, most of the time, not because there was anything wrong with the food, but because hunger seemed to have left him. The hours he spent asleep were shortening as well. When they'd first gotten home, he'd slept seven hours before waking. Last night it'd been four. Tonight, just three. He didn't know why but he could feel the toll it was taking on him and he knew that Dean would notice soon, if he hadn't already.

His lungs burned if he tried to take a deep breath, and images popped into his mind of lesions and bleeding sores pocking them, the blood pooling at the bottom and irritating the membranes into forming more sores. He looked it up. The only disease – normal, natural disease – that affected the lungs like that was TB. Tuberculosis. A disease more or less wiped out by the early twentieth century and one having no business in his body.

Searching through the books had yielded nothing. No correlation with the trials, the little they'd found on them. No mention in relation to God's tests even of the faithful … He'd sent afflictions to those He wanted to test, in great, generous bouts, but usually it was leprosy or boils or some other kind of disease. And it was weakening him, he knew. Day by day.

He wiped his face, leaning close to the mirror to make sure every trace of the blood that had spilled over his lips was gone.

_You said you would tell Dean, when it got bad_, the insistent voice in his mind reminded him.

He would. It wasn't bad yet. Not bad enough to worry his brother who had plenty of crap to worry about already.

* * *

_**Great Falls, Montana**_

He looked like a man, but had never been one. The oracles and the philosophers and the magicians had all credited him with the creation of Man, shaped from the clay of Gaia's flesh, brought to life with his breath in their mouths … he'd laughed when he'd heard it first, laughed and then had fallen silent as he'd realised that for all his teachings, for all that he'd brought to them, they were still simple, still searching for meaning in the simple things they knew that lay within their own experience.

And, three thousand years later, not much had changed, he thought tiredly, walking along the side of the highway, the cold biting into his flesh through the thin layer of clothes that he'd been wearing when he'd awoken. Pandora's curiosity had released the ignorance and evil, the unthinking cruelty and carelessness and tainted knowledge he'd hidden away and it had all taken root in the sons and daughters of Man.

His feet ached and he wrapped his arms tighter around himself as he walked, wishing he'd had the forethought to at least bring a damned coat with him from the cabin before walking out. _So much for his vaunted gifts and powers_, he thought bitterly.

Behind him, driving a five-year old enclosed pickup, Larry Wilson was tired and lonely, drowning his sorrows in a beer picked up from the last gas station. It was the fifth beer of the six pack and so far it hadn't drowned anything, just left him feeling sleepy and with an increasingly urgent need to pee. He started awake as the bottle tipped from his nerveless fingers, spilling the last few mouthfuls over his lap, dropping it onto the floor and cursing as he reached for the box of Kleenex that rode shotgun in the passenger seat. _What else could go fucking wrong_, he wondered miserably, mopping ineffectively at the dampness that had soaked through his crotch and was the car with the smell of brew.

The headlights lit up the figure ahead but Larry didn't see him, his gaze on the damp denim of his lap and his hand reaching out blindly for another handful of tissues. He sensed the change in direction at the last minute, yanking the wheel back to the right as the front of the car hit something and he looked up, mouth dropping open as the man smacked into the windshield and bounced off, falling out of sight to the ground in front of the car. Hitting the brakes, he gripped the wheel tightly as the back end slewed around in the mixture of ice and slush that covered the shoulder, face screwed up in a grimace, expecting the front tyres to lurch over the body. But they didn't.

Larry got out and walked around to the front of the engine, staring down at the man lying in the scrim of snow on the verge. He could see blood, red and sticky over half the face, could see the way the arms and legs didn't look quite right, bending in the wrong directions. He swallowed against the sudden convulsion in his stomach, closing his mouth tightly and turning away. The man hadn't moved.

He pulled out his phone, staring down at the screen, his finger poised over the button marked 'nine' as the events of the evening slowly replayed through his mind. Five beers. Falling asleep at the wheel. Killing someone.

Nothing could bring that man back, he thought to himself, looking at the still figure. _Was it fair to ruin two lives?_ Would anyone gain anything by him calling it in and being arrested, charged, tried and put in jail for god knew how long over what had been a simple mistake? He'd spilled his goddamned beer, for Christ's sake. He hadn't meant to kill the guy, hadn't been trying to do anything but block out what had been the worst week of his life.

Putting the phone back in his pocket, he turned back to the truck and opened the door, getting in. _It was a mistake_, he thought again. _Just a mistake_. Putting the car into gear, he eased it off the shoulder and back across the road, one flickered glance in the rear view mirror showing the man still lying there, motionless in the red wash of his taillights.

_You won't remember this_, he told himself. _In the morning, this'll just be a bad, bad dream and you won't remember it. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fucking well fair!_

The eagle watched the car speed off, the rear lights bright against the blackness of the night. It turned its head to look down at the man lying on the road. After a moment, it spread its wings and glided down to the man, landing on the firm hipbone, claws digging in through the thin denim as it looked at the man's face. Then it dropped its head to the t-shirt that covered the torso and caught at it in its beak, pulling sharply until the cloth tore away and exposed the smooth, soft skin beneath.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Dean looked at the plate by Sam's elbow. Most of the grilled chicken, lettuce and tomato sandwich was still there, untouched. His brother had taken a few bites and then forgotten it.

How long did he want to wait before bringing it up? A bit longer, he decided reluctantly. He'd told Sam he'd trust him with the trials, told him that he'd back him if he said he was good to go. And Sam kept saying he was okay, he was fine. And where had he learned that? He pushed that thought aside sourly, picking up the plate without commenting and taking it back to the kitchen.

It'd been a week of reading and worrying and he was ready to start climbing the walls. Cas was still out of touch but he couldn't afford the time to worry about the angel now. Kevin was still working on the second trial, not even a hint as to what shape it would take, what it would demand of Sam. His dreams were filled with half-seen shadows and dangers that brought him to wakefulness in a cold sweat, sure that whatever it was had been about to kill his brother and he'd been stuck, not able to do anything but watch. He'd rather have the dreams of Hell than face the unknown night after night.

Something had shifted inside of him. Some realisation or revelation or epiphany had started a process that for him was always slow, a process of revisiting the past and reviewing it, seeing things he hadn't noticed before, seeing things from a slightly different perspective. The fatalism that had filled him from the moment he'd gotten out of Purgatory was dissolving, somehow. He wasn't sure why, exactly, only that one of the springs that had been wound too tight inside had been released and he was breathing a little more deeply, a little more easily now.

He put the plate on the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot, thinking about that. It wasn't that everything had become good and fine and light again, he thought, brow furrowing as he tried to nail the feeling. More like … something had been laid to rest, maybe. Or his hold on something had loosened.

It didn't matter, not now. That process would work its way through and eventually he'd see the end result. Right now, he had other things to consider. He carried the cup back to the library as Sam came up the steps from the war room, waving a piece of paper at him.

"Got a case, I think," he said and Dean walked to him, taking the paper and skimming it.

"Huh." He looked at Sam. "Kind of thin, where'd it come from?"

"Great Falls, Montana. Came through on the police scanner. Sheriff called back on it ten minutes ago." Sam's brow creased up. "Could be a zombie?"

"Could be a lot of things," Dean said slowly. "Could be the cop didn't register what he was seeing."

"Twenty year vet," Sam countered.

"Why didn't he follow the tracks if he was sure the guy got up and walked?"

"I don't know," Sam said, shrugging. "We could go ask him?"

"Why are you so hot to take a case?" Dean asked, looking at him. Sam shrugged.

"You're about at the end of your leash, and I could use some fresh air," he said, gesturing around the room. "We've been reading for five days and we haven't found anything. Change of scenery might help get a fresh perspective."

Dean looked at him thoughtfully for a moment then nodded. "Thousand mile drive to clear the cobwebs? Sure. Why not?"

* * *

_**I-80 W, Nebraska**_

Dean glanced at the passenger seat as they hit the interstate heading west, his breath escaping in a small sigh as he saw that Sam was already curled awkwardly into the corner, asleep.

It was a fifteen-hour drive, across to Wyoming and then north, he thought, glancing at his watch as he calculated the time and distance. They'd hit Great Falls early in the morning if he drove through the night.

The damned case was incredibly thin. They'd gone across the country for less, but it still felt like it was going to turn out to be a deadhead. People sometimes weren't injured as bad as they looked. He'd read somewhere some guy had fallen out of a plane at thirty thousand feet and had walked away … somewhere in the mountains, he thought, guy'd hit snow, a deep drift, on an angle that had slowed him down enough then hit a bunch of sheep, huddled together and buried underneath the snow, ploughed into them and broke a leg. If luck threw out cards like that, it made other things seem a lot more likely.

On the other hand, he thought, maybe the close proximity for the next few days would force Sam to say something. Or maybe not. He rubbed a hand over his forehead in frustration.

He'd asked him again, under the guise of working the shifts for driving, how he was. Got the same answer as always, and plainly his kid brother wasn't taking a real good look at himself in the mirror when he shaved because that answer just didn't cut it with the bruised looking eye sockets and the waxen paleness under Sam's normally light olive skin tones.

A promise was a promise. And that's what he'd made, so he could just suck it up and live with it. For a while longer. A little while longer, he thought, glancing again at his brother. In the dim light of the dash, he could see Sam's face twitching, his head moving slightly against the glass of the passenger window as if he was flinching from something in his dreams. He hoped that Sam wasn't having the same sort of dreams as him.

* * *

_**Great Falls, Montana**_

Dean pulled up in front of the sheriff's office and got out of the car, smoothing down the front of the suit automatically as he locked it and pocketed the keys. He followed Sam inside the building.

Sheriff Jack Baxter leaned back in his chair behind his desk, looking up at the two agents who'd flashed their badges and interrupted his morning routine.

"If you could just tell us what happened, Sheriff?" Dean said, glancing at Sam.

"You didn't see the report?" Sheriff Baxter asked truculently. "It's all there."

"We like to hear it direct, Sheriff," Sam said soothingly. "Sometimes, just a retelling can jog another detail loose."

Baxter nodded slowly at that. It was true, and he'd used the technique with witnesses himself. "Alright. I was on the 89, heading back from a four-fifteen, saw a guy lying on the left side shoulder just past mile marker twenty-three. I pulled over and examined him – checked for pulse, for respiration. I found no pulse, no respiration. He'd been lying there long enough for his skin to have frozen. A large raptor was on the body when I pulled up. Pecked a hole in the guy's body big enough to put your hand in, right through the clothing."

Dean nodded, swallowing slightly at the vivid mental image that description produced.

"I returned to my vehicle, got my radio and called it in. Dispatch was ordering the meat-wagon when I turned around … and the guy had gone."

"Gone?"

"Gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Was no longer there," the sheriff clarified sourly. "I walked back to where he'd been lying and there was a single set of tracks, leading away from the road and into the woods. I returned to my vehicle and called in the situation and then I left."

"You didn't follow him?" Dean frowned.

"Son, this is rough country and we got a big population of grizzlies here. It's spring. They're hungry. No one goes wandering around the woods on their own. You have to go in, you have a couple of guys with you and you carry something big enough to take them down. Not a little pea-shooter like what I got on my belt," the sheriff explained slowly. He looked at Sam. "So, I gotta question, what possible interest does the Bureau have in this? You were here awful fast for something that's turned out to be nothing."

"We thought it might've been connected to another case," Dean lied smoothly. "Some guy in –"

"Jack?" The young blonde assistant at the counter turned around and looked at the sheriff. "Think you oughta take a look at this?" She gestured to the computer screen in front of her, showing an initial ME's report with a large photograph of a man whose face had been severely torn up. "Just came in on the wire from Livingston."

Baxter got up and walked around his desk, bending slightly as he peered at the screen. "Bear attack?"

"Yup," the blonde confirmed. "Found early this morning."

Baxter swore softly under his breath. "Pardon my French, Marcie, but goddamn, that's the same guy."

Sam stepped in beside him, looking over Marcie's shoulder at the screen. "The same guy you saw?"

"Yeah," Baxter said, nodding. "I'm sure of it."

Sam glanced over him at Dean. "Uh, Livingston, that's a fair distance, isn't it?"

"A hundred and seventy three miles," Baxter said, turning to them with a frown. "How the hell he'd get down there in one night _and_ manage to fit in a bear mauling?"

"He could have hooked a ride," Sam said, more to Dean than the sheriff. "Taken him most of the way."

"This time of year, we don't have a lot of passing traffic down there," Baxter said. "And locals wouldn't stop, not for a stranger."

"Well, thanks for your time, Sheriff, and we'll take it from here," Dean said briskly.

"You sure you boys don't want me to come along?" Sheriff Baxter asked, hooking his thumbs through his belt as he straightened. "Might think of some little, overlooked detail?"

"No, we're good," Dean said, turning for the door. Sam smiled at Baxter awkwardly and followed his brother out and down to the car.

"That was smooth," he said, getting in when his brother had unlocked the door.

"Guy's found dead, and gets up and walks away. Gets mauled by a grizzly and is found dead … again." Dean started the engine and glanced at the map beside him. Livingston was a three-hour drive from Great Falls. Even with a ride, which no one had come forward about, it left the timing a little strained.

"See if you can get the ME on the phone and ask them to hold off on the autopsy until we get there," he said to Sam, pulling out and accelerating.

* * *

_**Livingston, Montana**_

The morgue was in the basement of the County Hospital, several offices surrounding it belonging to the various staff of the ME's department. The medical examiner confirmed that no autopsy had been performed and handed them the preliminary findings report.

"Bear attack, no question," Dr Lui said. "A big one, by the size of the claw wounds and bite marks." He shrugged. "It's spring."

"Thank you, doctor," Sam said, skimming down the report and handing it to Dean. "Can we examine the body?"

"Yeah, it's on the table," the doctor said, gesturing to the door. They walked into the room and looked at the body lying on the table. It had been washed, blood and debris were gone from the wounds, which were deep, penetrating through the muscle to the underlying bone. The man's fair skin was tinted blue, lividity pronounced underneath.

"No ID found on the body?"

Dr Lui shook his head. "Ran his fingerprints too, but no hits."

Sam lifted the sheet, frowning as he saw the deep hole on the side of the body. "What's going on here?"

"Liver was eaten," Lui said, pulling on a fresh set of gloves. "Best guess, a bird got at it."

Dean looked at Sam as the sheriff's description on the scanner came back to both. _Weird._

"Thanks," Sam said to the ME as they turned and left, walking down the hallway.

"Well?" Sam stopped outside the viewing window.

"Well what?" Dean glanced at the body through the window. "I'm seeing weird, but not much else, Sam. Guy gets hit by a truck, takes a nap in the freezing cold, maybe the sheriff missed the artery when he checked the pulse. Sun comes up, he gets up and takes a detour into some bear's territory … he's dead."

"And the hundred and seventy mile hike?" Sam asked. "And both times, a bird is pecking a hole in his side, going for his liver?"

"I don't know," Dean said exasperatedly. "But he's dead. Case closed."

He looked back through the window. The table was empty.

* * *

They found him halfway down the hall heading for the lift, the cadaver sheet wrapped around his body. He stopped when he saw the guns, lifting one hand as the other kept hold of his make-shift covering.

"You better start talking," Dean said, pushing him back into the autopsy room as Sam moved around the table to the window and closed the blinds tightly.

"What are you?" Dean demanded, slamming him down on the table, the gun pressed against the back of his head.

"What? I'm not anything?" The man said, face pressed against the stainless draining board.

"Two minutes ago you were room temperature," Dean said. "You're something!"

"Look," the man said desperately. "I don't know what I am. I don't know who I am. All I know is all I do is die, so if you want to shoot me then go ahead, just make sure you do it right because I can't take this anymore!"

Dean uncocked the gun and stepped back. "Get up."

"All you do is die?" Sam asked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The man turned to face them, hitching up his sheet. "Once a day for as long as I can remember. After a few hours, I'm back."

Dean looked at him, running through everything he'd ever heard about or seen that had to do with resurrections. Aside from their own multiple examples, he couldn't recall a scenario that was even remotely similar to the one this guy was describing.

"Alright, well listen, we're not going to find out what the hell you are in here," Dean said, his gaze cutting aside to Sam. "So you're going to come with us. We're gonna run a few tests, make sure everything's as it's supposed to be. You got a name?"

"Uh … Shane. What kind of tests?"

"Definitive ones," Dean said, gesturing to the door with the automatic. "After you."

* * *

Hunters, he thought, as the car drove through the town. That was to be expected. It would be better to play dumb, to be seen as a man. Better for all of them. Who really believed in the old myths these days? Even the hunters had trouble swallowing them, and they were the most inured to unbelievable things in a world that primarily believed in fast digital connections and the latest new thing.

The blade of the silver knife was razor-sharp and slid easily through the skin of his arm, leaving a fine cut and a spill of red blood. He winced at the pain and pressed the cloth the hunter gave him against the wound.

"Seriously? This is FBI sanctioned?" he asked, looking at the hunter who'd made the cut.

"Drink," the taller one said, handing him a small, silver flask. He sniffed at the contents, detecting the subtle scent of water and tipped it up, swallowing a mouthful and handing it back.

Silver would give a reaction in many of the monsters that roamed the night. And the water was probably blessed, he thought, to advise of a possession of evil. Looking at them, he could see that they were rethinking their theories about him.

"Alright, so how long has this dying thing been going on?"

"As long as I can remember," he said. "But my memory only goes back a few years."

"What, so now you have amnesia?" The hunter exchanged a disbelievingly look with the other. Brothers, he thought to himself. A lot of conflict between them, put aside when they work.

"I suppose so," he said reluctantly. "I don't know what my real name is. I was given the name Shane, because, well I guess people had to call me something."

"Shane, I'm Sam, this Dean," Sam said. "What do you remember?"

"I was on a mountain, in eastern Europe. I don't know how or why I was there, but there was an avalanche, and I was rescued, along with others. When I realised my … condition … I knew I couldn't be around other people, so I built a little cabin, learned to hunt … kept to myself," he said, a trace of bitterness edging his voice. "It seemed easiest that way."

"Okay," Dean said. "And?"

"And then a couple of the local 'herbalists' got uneasy with my place being near their crops. They shot me, twice and I figured it was time to move on."

"Right into the grill of that pickup."

He shrugged, looking at them. "You think maybe I could borrow some clothes? Clean up?"

"Uh … yeah," Dean said, walking around to his duffle and dragging out a shirt and a pair of jeans. He tossed them to Shane. "Knock yourself out."

"Thanks," he said, catching them one-handed and walking into the bathroom and closing the door behind him.

"Well, he's definitely something," Dean said.

"Yeah, but maybe he's not the monster," Sam said slowly. "Maybe he's the victim."

Dean looked at him. "Cursed?"

Sam nodded. "Still leaves a wide variety."

"Witch, object, family … yeah." Dean rubbed a hand over his jaw, looking at the closed bathroom door.

"You know what?" Sam said, turning to him. "He's parked here, he's safe … maybe we should get another room until we can figure this out."

"Yeah." He turned to the door. "What about protection?"

"We don't have that much with us, and I'm not sure what to protect against." Sam's brow creased up worriedly. "As curses go, it does seem kind of grandiose …" he stopped for a moment, brows drawing together sharply.

"What?"

"I don't know – just got this sense of familiarity," Sam said, running his hand through his hair. "I can't get it."

His brother shrugged. "I'll get the room."

* * *

The room was dark, the muted white noise of the traffic on the highway an unvarying background that didn't draw the senses. He snapped into wakefulness with the soft snick of the lock being withdrawn, his mind trained to alarm at every unknown sound, every shift of the wind and hint of scent.

And that scent, he knew that scent.

She drifted into the room silently, and he closed his eyes, steadied his breathing as he waited. The mattress dipped slightly under her weight as she sat beside him, and he felt the featherlight touch of her fingers along the side of his face.

His hand smacked against her wrist, gripping it tightly as he turned and looked up at her. Dark hair, straight and shining framed a beautiful face, not warm, he thought distantly, but strong. He watched her lips curve up a little in a small smile.

"Who are you?" he asked her and the smile disappeared as she stared into his eyes.

"You don't remember?" she asked him uncertainly. He didn't answer and he saw a deep disappointment flower in her face and vanish.

"Never mind," she said, lifting her right hand. The dim light from the motel parking lot glinted along the edge of the long blade she held in it.

He watched the tightening of the muscle in her shoulder and intercepted the hand as it plunged toward him, arching up beside her, his greater weight and strength driving her backwards off the bed and onto the floor. Gripping her shoulder and wrist he used her forward thrust against her, lifting and swinging her back into the wall, shifting his stance as she slid off the counter and walked toward him.

Behind them, the door opened, Dean framed in the doorway, the Kurdish knife held in his hand as he took in the situation and took a long stride toward the woman. She dropped to the floor, leg scything out and catching his, and he hit the floor on his back, as Sam was thrown backwards through the doorway into the parking lot with a fast gesture of her hand.

Shane reached out and grabbed the back of her coat as she lifted the long knife above Dean, yanking her backwards and twisting his hip as he transferred weight and motion and threw her against the wall. They both looked down at the knife, gleaming on the floor between them and she lunged forward, fingers curling around the hilt as his closed around her arm, twisting it back up behind her, driving his thumb in between the tendons of the wrist and catching the hilt as it dropped. He forced the arm back higher, standing close to her side, her breath huffing against his cheek as he lifted the blade and touched the point lightly to her face.

"You used to be faster" he said softly to her, forgetting the men in the room. "Or were you holding back for old time's sake?"

Dean got to his feet, and Sam regained the door as they watched Shane holding the woman.

"I used to love you." She looked at him, lifting her hand and gripping the blade of the knife. "Now? I'm your worst enemy."

Prometheus felt her arm vanish from his grip, his fingers clenching where it had been as she dissolved into smoke and disappeared entirely.

"Who the hell was that?" Dean said, the anger back.

He looked at the hunter, and realised that he couldn't go back to the pretence of amnesia now. "Artemis," he said flatly.

Sam's brows shot up. "As in the Huntress? Daughter of Zeus."

"Yes." He turned away, feeling a sharp pain stab through his left arm. He lifted it, closing his fingers into a fist.

"And who the hell are you?" Dean asked him, his voice suddenly deeper.

"I … uh … I'm …" he said thickly, staggering backward as the pain intensified and pressure began to fill his chest. "I'm … Prometheus."

Sam and Dean exchanged identical looks. "The Titan?" Sam asked.

"Son of …" Prometheus gasped, his face crumpling as the pressure grew and the pain suddenly bloomed with it. "… of … of …"

"Hey," Dean said, stepping forward as Prometheus dragged in a sharp breath and dropped to his knees. "Hey!"

His blood was roaring in his ears and cold was spreading from shoulder down his arm and through his chest to his hip. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, falling onto his side as the pain ripped through him.

"Is he having a heart attack?" Dean asked Sam.

"Should I call 911?"

"And tell them what?" Dean snapped. "That the dead guy we stole from the morgue is alive and having a coronary?"

They watched helplessly as Prometheus jerked on the floor, then arched back, his eyes open wide, staring at them … then just staring, the life gone, the eyeballs glazing over in death.

"Crap!"

"Pick him up," Sam said suddenly. "Get him on the bed."

Dean looked at him irritably. "Because it's tidier than having him on the floor?"

"Because he's Prometheus," Sam said patiently, going to his feet and picking them up. "He was cursed by Zeus to be killed every day and renewed in the morning."

"I thought Prometheus created man and brought fire?"

Dean picked up his shoulders and lifted, backing up between the beds and easing the man onto the edge.

"Right, he was teaching mankind knowledge – he … uh … managed to trick Zeus, somehow, into choosing the worst offering of a sacrifice and Zeus took back fire. Prometheus broke into Olympus and took it back, and this was his punishment." He put Prometheus' legs down and sat down on the other bed.

"Dammit, there's hundreds of books in the library on the Greek pantheon," he said irritably.

Dean looked at him and shrugged. "Maybe we need to figure a way to get it accessible in the field."

"You know how long it would take to get it digitalised?" Sam shook his head. "The gist should be on the net, I'll get the computer."

"How long do we have to wait till he's back again?" Dean looked at Sam who was sitting at the table, bent over the keyboard of the laptop.

"I don't know," Sam said, frowning at the screen. "The myth is that Zeus had Prometheus chained to the top of Mount Kaukasos – that's Caucasus, which is a mountain range, not just a single peak, in eastern Europe. Probably Mount Elbus, as that's the highest. One of the forms of Zeus was a golden eagle and each day the eagle would attack Prometheus and eat his liver. Each night he would be healed and the next day it would start again."

"But this guy was fine all day?"

"Yeah." Sam looked around. "It explains the birds eating the liver, not much else."

"So …" Dean stopped at the sound of light knocking on the motel room door.

He got up, the automatic in his hand and moved to the window, easing the edge aside. In front of the door, a tall, slender in jeans and a jacket was waiting. He walked to the door and put the barrel against the door as he opened it a few inches. The woman had her arm around a young boy, both of them looking uncomfortable.

"May I help you?"

"Agent Bonham?" The woman looked at him hopefully. "This is going to sound really strange, but I'm looking for a corpse that went missing yesterday? The coroner said that you were the last one to see it?" She glanced down at the boy and back to him. "I'm Hayley, uh, Davis."

Dean felt Sam walk up behind him. "This is Agent Jones."

"Why are you looking for our John Doe?" Sam asked quietly.

"Well, his name is Shane," she said diffidently. "At least … that's what I called him. I'm the mother of his son."

"Oh … okay," Dean said, looking down at the boy. "Hey."

"He's shy," Hayley said, and her gaze sharpened as she looked past him into the room, at the pair of jean-covered legs that were lying on the bed. "Oliver, stay with the nice FBI agents," she added to her son, pushing past Dean.

"Oh you weren't supposed to –" Dean looked back into the room.

"It's okay," she said, going to the bed.

Dean forced a smile at Oliver, glancing back and watching her sit down on the edge, her hair hiding her face as she looked down at Prometheus.

"How long has he been dead?" She turned to Sam.

"Four hours," Sam said. "You know about it?"

She nodded. "A little."

She got up and walked back to the door. "Has he said anything to you … about his past … or me?"

Sam looked at Dean before answering. "He said he was rescued from an avalanche."

"Yeah," Hayley said, looking out into the lot. "Hey, Oliver, do you want to play on the swings?"

He nodded and she stepped past Sam, taking the boy's hand and leading him to the small playground on the other side of the narrow lot. Dean followed her, and Sam stepped outside, closing the door behind him. Walking to the picnic table on the lawn beside the playground, they sat down and waited for Hayley.

She turned around and walked over to them, pushing her hair back from her face as she sat down.

"It was … one of those trips, finished college, didn't have any immediate job prospects. We were going to climb this mountain, and I don't know … it seemed like a good idea at the time," she said, her mouth twisting slightly. "There was an avalanche and my friends were gone. When I came to, I found him. And he was alive, just barely, I thought. It took us four days to get down, and he … I kept thinking it was shock, you know, the way he'd … he'd seem to stop breathing, or I couldn't find a pulse, and … but he'd come back and he got me down. I wouldn't have made it if he hadn't been there."

"He was in a hurry to leave and we just flew back here, to the States, I mean, and the experience, it changed us – changed everything. He stayed with me, and one night … we were … and he had a heart attack." She looked down at her hands, the fingers twisting around themselves. "I called for an ambulance, but they couldn't save him, and then –"

Sam's eyes narrowed slightly as he watched her. "He turned up, alive again?"

She nodded. "I thought of all the times, all the things I'd told myself before but I couldn't pretend this was a mistake, that I'd made a mistake. I ran."

"And then I had Oliver," she said, looking across at the swings where the little boy was swinging slowly by himself. She looked back at Sam. "I hired a private investigator – I really tried to find him. But … when they gave up, I gave up. Until a couple of months ago."

"And what made you look again?" Sam asked.

Hayley looked at him, her eyes filling with tears. "My son died."

Dean flicked a glance at the boy on the swings. "And he came back. Like his father."

She nodded, wiping impatiently at the wetness on her cheeks. Her gaze shifted from Dean past him and they turned around as they heard the motel door close.

"Hayley?" Prometheus said, looking at her.

She got up, walking toward him. "Hi Shane." Turning to the boy, she called. "Oliver, come here, honey."

With her arm around him, she met Prometheus at the foot of the steps to the rooms. "I thought it was time you two met," she said, looking up at him.

Dean saw him look down at the boy, watched the realisation dawn gradually in his face.

* * *

Outside the window, Hayley pushed Oliver on the swing. Prometheus stared through the window, watching them absently.

"I didn't shape men from clay, you know," he said, mouth twisted derisively as he looked at Sam. "Or breathe life into them. I was allowed to stay out of Tartarus so long as I kept my nose clean and my head down."

"Tartarus?" Dean asked curiously.

"Alternative plane of existence," Prometheus said. "Where the Olympians threw the Titans after the war."

"But you didn't keep a low profile," Sam said.

"No," Prometheus said with a long sigh. "I thought I could help. They were arguing about what parts of an animal to give to Zeus for a sacrifice. I suggested that they wrap the best meat in the skin and put the organs on top, and wrap the bones in the fat, and let Zeus choose the portions he wanted."

"And he chose the bones, thinking it was the meat?"

"Yeah." The proto-god shrugged. "Zeus never had a sense of humour, not really. Took it all too seriously. He took the ability to light fire away from men with that one."

"And you brought it back," Dean said.

Prometheus nodded. "It'd been my idea, the sacrifice thing. I felt I had to make it up to them."

"That's when you were chained to Mount Elbus?"

"Yeah, and Zeus introduced Pandora," Prometheus said. "The first woman – not really, of course, but the first one whose curiosity exceeded her intelligence. I'd had a lot of the bad stuff locked away from humanity, and she managed to find the damned box and open it."

"What bad stuff?" Dean asked.

"You know … cruelty, evil, black magic, the dark arts, the stuff people really weren't equipped to handle."

"So … she opened it and what? All that stuff just flew out?"

"Pretty much," Prometheus said. "And there wasn't a thing I could do about it then."

"You've escaped from the mountain before this?" Sam asked curiously, remembering what Artemis had said.

"Yes, every now again something would happen and I'd get free. The first few times, I was free for awhile. Artemis is a loyal daughter, but we had a thing for a couple of thousand years, and she'd tell her father that she couldn't find me for a while, give me some time off the rock, give us some time together." He looked back through the window. "The last time, Zeus suspected that she wasn't trying very hard. He imprisoned her for four hundred years. I've got to get away from them. They're not safe with me around."

"They're not safe, period, Prometheus," Dean said flatly. "Hayley said that what happens to you has started to happen to Oliver too. So the question is – how do we break Zeus' curse?"

"Break it?" Prometheus shook his head. "You can't. We can't. He'd have to rescind it and along with a poor sense of humour, he really doesn't have an open mind." He sat up as he noticed the swings were empty. The door opened and Hayley came in, Oliver in her arms, blood drying on his face from a wound at the side of his head.

"What happened?" Dean got up, looking past Sam who'd also risen.

"He fell," she said, laying him on the bed. She turned around to look at them. "I told you, it's the same … thing … that –"

"Every day?" Prometheus asked, his face drawn as he looked at the boy.

She nodded. "That's why I came to find you. I have to know how to stop it."

Sam and Dean looked at Prometheus. The son of a Titan shook his head.

"You can't. No one can."

"Don't bet on it," Dean snapped. "We can figure this out, but not here."

Hayley looked at him. "Where?"

"Someplace safe," Sam reassured her. "Someplace we can find the answers without having to worry about anything – or anyone – else."

"I need my car," she said, biting her lip as she realised she couldn't drive and watch over Oliver at the same time.

"Sam'll bring your car," Dean said, looking at Prometheus. "You two and Oliver ride with me."

* * *

_**I-80 E, Nebraska**_

Oliver was sleeping normally, the head wound had closed up and he lay along the back seat of the Impala, his head resting on Hayley's lap. She was asleep in the corner of the seat, her arm loosely draped over her son's chest.

Dean shifted his gaze back from the mirror to the road. "Instant family."

Prometheus turned to look at him, nodding slightly. "It makes running harder."

"Then don't run," Dean said softly. "Fight for them."

"Against the Father of Gods?" Prometheus snorted. "Killing me might delay him ten seconds on the way to whatever it is he has to do next."

"Everything has a weakness, man," Dean said, glancing sideways at him. "One thing we've learned in this life, is that. It's just a matter of finding it."

"He has plenty of weaknesses, Dean." He leaned back into the corner and rubbed his eyes. "Women, wine, humiliating people and gods, pride, wrath … he's full of weaknesses … doesn't translate to a way to make him back down."

"Well, if he's not inclined to change his mind, we'll gank him," Dean said, shrugging.

"Gank him?"

"Kill him."

"Just like that?" Prometheus smiled unwillingly. "With your magic spear, perhaps?"

"We'll find a way."

"Don't gamble on it," he said, the smile disappearing. "Half the gods on Olympus have tried and failed. Multiple times."

"So what was the story with him throwing your family into prison?" Dean asked, not wanting to think about that right now.

"Well, it was all pretty well asked for," Prometheus said tiredly. "His father, Cronus, was a Titan. There was an oracle at Dodone, foresaw that one of his children would over throw him, so Cronus ate them, one after the other, as soon as they were born."

"What?" Dean turned his head to look at him. "Jesus, that's gross!"

"Yeah, well, old days, old ways. Zeus' mother, Rhea, hid Zeus when he was born, and while he was growing up. When he reached adulthood, he confronted Cronus and made him bring forth his siblings."

"Huh."

"Bends the brain to visualise it, don't bother."

"And then?"

"And then he fought with the Titans, with his sisters and brothers and they defeated them and threw them into Tartarus, becoming the Olympians and ruling the world from Mount Olympus." Prometheus said. "It all happened a long, long, long time ago."

"Why would this curse be passed on to your children?"

"I told you, that's his sense of humour. It's cruel. Capricious. He delights in the suffering of those who've opposed him," Prometheus said, gesturing vaguely.

"In other words, he's a dick," Dean said bluntly.

"I guess that's one way to describe him," the god agreed.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Dean carried Oliver upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms, Hayley following him and pulling back the covers as he was laid on the bed. She took off his shoes and socks, turning around to nod her thanks to him and he left the room, pulling the door gently shut behind him.

Prometheus had also managed to die in the night. They'd left him on the long sofa in the office next to the library. Sam was pulling out books and stacking them on the table when he reached the long room.

"Dean, you do realise that the only gods we've ever managed to kill have been incredibly minor folk deities?" Sam said, looking up. "Lucifer killed Odin and the others in that motel."

"Well, we've taken out an angel, a couple of high-level demons … we've done alright," Dean said, looking at the books and peeling right down the hall to the kitchen.

"But Zeus is the Father of Gods, he's the equivalent of … hell, I don't even know what he's the equivalent of," Sam muttered, following him.

"There'll be something, Sam," Dean said, refilling the coffee pot and leaning against the counter. "I'm not going to just stand by and watch this go on."

"Of course not."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dean looked at him, hearing the edge in his voice.

"Nothing," Sam said.

"Not nothing."

"Is there any point that you reach where you stop and say, I can't do anything about this?" Sam asked, exasperatedly. "I mean, you're willing to go after anything, Dean, no matter how impossible, no matter what might happen to you."

"You saying that I should give up?" Dean frowned at him.

"No – no," Sam said, looking away. "I – I don't know what I'm saying, exactly. This … this is – look, I admire the quality, Dean, I do, but I have to wonder if you know that you have limits – that there are limits to what you can do."

The coffee pot burbled behind them in the silence that filled the room, the aroma strong and welcome. Dean wasn't sure what to say to his brother. He didn't consider what could or couldn't be done, only how he could do it.

Sam suddenly realised what had raised the thought in his head, and he went to the cupboard, pulling down the mugs and setting them on the table.

"Lot of reading to get through," Sam said abruptly. "I'm going to get started." He turned and walked out.

Dean watched him go, replaying the disjointed conversation in his head and the pieces fell together. His brother was thinking of his own limits. Of what was happening to him. Of what it meant. He looked at the coffee pot, almost full now, and wondered how to get Sam to talk about it. They could figure something out, if Sam would admit there was a problem.

When he got back to the library, his brother was already reading, skimming over pages.

Hayley came down the stairs slowly, stopping as she reached the library doorway. Dean looked over and gestured to a chair at the table.

"Do you want a coffee?"

"Please," she answered, walking to the table and sitting down. He passed her a cup and sat down opposite her.

"Take it slow," he advised her, seeing the tension in her hands as she reached for the hot cup and wrapped them around it.

"What's happening?" she asked, looking at him steadily despite the shiver that ran through her.

"When did this start happening to Oliver?" Sam looked up from his book, brow creased. "Exactly?"

"When he turned seven," she said, sipping the coffee. "He had a birthday party, and he ran out in front of a car … I spent the night at the hospital and they told me he'd … gone." She looked down at her cup, the tremble increasing for a moment as she struggled to keep those memories in check. "In the morning, he opened his eyes and all the wounds, all the injuries, they were gone."

She put down the cup carefully and rubbed the heel of her hand over her forehead. "I was … delirious, I guess. Overjoyed. But I realised we couldn't stay there, it wasn't a big town and word would get around too fast. We moved to a city, then another one."

Sam nodded. "Age seven marks the first Greek rites of manhood." He turned back to her. "Your son's father is Prometheus. He was the son of a Titan who helped humanity against Zeus, in ancient Greece."

Hayley's brows shot up. "You're serious?"

"Yeah, I am," Sam said quietly. "He's a god, and Oliver is a demi-god, a child of a god. And this … curse, this punishment that Zeus decided for Prometheus, for some reason, he's extended it to include his children."

She looked at Dean, who shrugged. "Zeus. Ancient Greece. And you two? How is it that you're sitting here in …" She looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time, the walls of books and maps, the scrolls and manuscripts and artefacts held in glass cases. "… this museum, and telling me this without breaking a sweat?"

"This is what we do, Hayley," Dean said. "We're hunters. We hunt down things like this and we deal with them."

"Deal with them?"

"Kill them, mostly."

For a moment, she sat still, looking down at her cooling coffee, one fingertip unconsciously circling her temple. Sam glanced at Dean, who picked up his cup and drank the coffee.

It was a lot to hit someone with, and he thought she was taking it pretty well, all things considered. He could give her a little time to let it sink in.

Hayley stopped trying to make sense of it all and let it sit instead. Like oil rising slowly to the water's surface, the pertinent facts arranged themselves clearly in her mind. Her son was doomed by this curse of his father's. The creature responsible was a god. The men sitting here with her were prepared to do something about it. The choice, her choice, was really quite simple.

"How do I stop it?" She looked up at him, her face hardening. "How do I make it go away?"

Dean pushed a stack of books toward her. "Start reading. We need to find a way to summon and trap Zeus, force him into changing his mind – or find a way to kill him."

"Can you kill a god?" she asked him, pulling the pile toward her and lifting the top book off.

"We're not sure," Sam said with a warning look at his brother.

"We can try," Dean countered, dragging another book toward him and flipping it open. "And we will try."

"And will killing him end the curse?" She stared at him intently.

"Usually the spell dies with the maker," he said. Sometimes not, but usually that was the case. He thought of Prometheus' comments about Zeus, about his pride and his hands-on approach. He thought in this case that the god would want control over everything. Wouldn't make a decision he couldn't change his mind about, if he wanted to. They would have to make sure he wanted to, he thought firmly.


	33. Chapter 33 The Bow of the Huntress

**Chapter 33 The Bow of the Huntress**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

First Oliver, then Prometheus emerged from their resting places, both starving hungry and disoriented. Hayley took them to the kitchen, looking through the surprisingly well-stocked fridge and pantry to make a meal, her thoughts still circling on the mythology of the gods of Greece.

In the library, Dean and Sam worked their through the books the order had gathered on the pantheon of the Greek gods. They ranged from the well-known retellings of the mythology and legends, of the Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, of Jason and Perseus and Hercules, through to more ancient hand-written texts, recordings of the oracles of Delphi and Dodone, of Ammon in Egypt and the muses of Dionysus, collections of the tales and stories of heroes and hunters, the creatures they fought and slew, Gorgon and Hydra, Minotaur and witches and sirens, and their interactions with Zeus and Hera, Pallas Athene and Poseidon and the lord of the underworld, Hades. Here and there, the mythology correlated with the transcribed journal accounts, and Sam made notes of where that occurred, references that would save time on future searches if required.

"You guys want something to eat?" Hayley came into the room hesitantly. "There's spaghetti going?"

Dean looked up and nodded. He got up and walked past his brother, turning as he realised Sam hadn't even looked up.

"Sam, food," he said, slapping his hand against Sam's shoulder lightly. "Fuel. Come on."

Sam looked up at him. "Uh … not really hungry, I'll get something later."

Watching him look down again, Dean frowned. The last thing he'd seen Sam eat had been a day ago in Montana, a few bites of a burger in Billings on the way out, hastily thrown when he'd finished filling the car. He nodded slowly and walked out of the library, following Hayley down to the kitchen.

* * *

"Your brother certainly is dedicated," she said as she dished out a bowlful of spaghetti and poured a ladle of rich meat and tomato sauce over it.

"Yeah," Dean muttered uneasily.

"Why are you helping us, Dean?" Prometheus asked, sitting next to Oliver. "It's not your fight."

Dean chewed his mouthful, thinking about the answer to that. "It's what we do," he said finally, looking down at the food.

Hayley's brows rose. "Put yourself in the way of gods and monsters and ghosts to help people without even getting paid for it?"

He smiled at her disbelieving tone, the expression slightly derisive.

"_But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future security_," Prometheus said softly, his eyes half-closed. "I was there, when that document was signed. I had a lot of hope then."

"What is it?" Hayley asked him.

He opened his eyes and looked at her for a moment, glancing down at Oliver. "It is from your Declaration of Independence," he said. "A provision against the tyranny of men against each other, but one, I think, that suits here just as well."

He looked at Dean. "When darkness descends, those with the ability to take action against it, also have the responsibility to do so, for they are the vanguard of humanity, the only ones who both see what is happening, and can do something about it."

Dean looked down at the table. Words were fine in a warm room with good food sitting in your stomach, he thought a little bitterly. That sense of responsibility lay inside of him, down to the marrow that filled his bones. He couldn't escape from it, couldn't set it aside. Couldn't separate it from himself and pretend it didn't exist. _The warrior's gift is to willingly storm Hell that Heaven may remain unstained_. He recognised his father's voice in his head, quoting someone, probably a military quote, he thought. Heaven had not remained unstained, but then they'd inserted themselves into the fight.

Prometheus watched the expressions fleetingly cross the man's face. "It always seems, at the end, that the cost is too high," he said gently. "But without that courage, the honour and loyalty and the responsibility, there would be no hope at all in this world."

* * *

Looking at his watch, Dean groaned softly as he saw the time. He poured out another inch of whiskey into his glass and shut the book he'd read, pushing it aside and picking up the next.

His head was reeling from the complexities of the interactions of the gods of Greece and their incessant meddling in the world. Machinations and manipulations, petty jealousies and love, endless manoeuvrings by human and god and monster to get the upper hand. It wasn't inspiring, he thought sourly, tipping the glass up and swallowing a mouthful.

There were weapons in the arsenals of the gods and hidden away by the various monsters and mortals. Weapons that could kill immortals. He'd particularly liked Perseus' solution to the killing of the kraken. It'd been creative. But so far, he hadn't found any reference to anything that would kill Zeus, or even be enough of a threat to change the god's mind.

At the other table, Sam read on, going through the books from the apothecary on poisons and antidotes. There were hundreds, covering dozens of creatures, many of which would have been damned useful a few years ago, poisons that worked with a scratch, that had to be ingested, that worked on the membranes or the lungs, liver, heart. He pushed his hair back off his forehead and kept reading.

_The shield of Athene. The mace of Ares, god of war. The bow of Artemis_. He read the description, remembering the huntress, her speed and strength in the dark room had been a rude shock. Made of yew, the bow could only be drawn by an immortal, its weight beyond the strength of any man. She carried three different types of arrows … wooden shaft and head, made from the heartwood of an oak killed by lightning; metal shaft and head, wrought from the heart of a falling star, and stone shaft and head, cut from obsidian. Each type would kill certain immortals, but only the timber arrows could kill any of them.

"Might have something here," Dean said, rereading the description. "Artemis has arrows that can kill any immortal."

Prometheus looked up, nodding slowly. "The oak arrows. Zeus killed the tree with lightning for her. But it was never certain that the wood would kill him, despite holding his own power."

"This will," Sam said, looking tiredly at them. "_Mortes Immortalis_. It was made by Hera to kill Hades."

"Her brother?" Dean said, leaning forward. "Nice family."

"Hades trapped her daughter and she went to the Stygian witches for a way to get her free." Sam shrugged. "We need the hair of a beautiful woman, the blood of a black animal, the root and branch from a laurel and … uh … the bone of a Titan."

"Doesn't sound too hard. Where do we get the bone of a Titan?" Dean asked.

"Since they're all in Tartarus, we might have to make a trip there," Sam replied dryly.

"I thought you said that Tartarus was on a different plane?" Dean said uncertainly.

"It is," Sam agreed, pulling a thick book from the pile he'd already been through and flipping through the pages. "I saw a spell in here, used by a hunter to cross over and –"

"No. That won't be necessary," Prometheus said, shaking his head. "One of mine will be enough."

"You sure?" Sam asked him. "You said you weren't –"

"My mother was Leto, one of the twelve," Prometheus said. "It will be enough."

He looked at them. "When I've died tonight, cut off my finger. Burn the flesh from the bone."

"We still need a way to get the bastard somewhere we can use this stuff," Dean said, looking at Sam.

"Keep looking."

* * *

Prometheus died at four o'clock in the morning. Dean got up and lifted the dead god over his shoulder, looking at Sam.

"I'll get the finger," he said. Sam nodded and opened the next transcribed journal, picking up the cup of cold coffee and finishing it absently as he read.

He hadn't eaten in over thirty-six hours. The thought drifted through his mind tenuously. He wasn't hungry but it worried him. He hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. That worried him as well. Twice he'd left the room and books when he'd felt the urge to cough come over him, hurrying down to the bathroom beyond the kitchen. Blood had spattered out with each wrenching contraction of his chest. He didn't have a temperature and aside from the fact his lungs seemed to be eating themselves, he didn't feel much different. _Not bad enough yet_, he'd told himself. _Not yet_.

The book he was reading was the transcription of the journal of a hunter who'd lived three thousand years ago, in Greece primarily, but travelling back and forth across the Mediterranean, between the northern countries and the coast and interior of the African continent. He'd managed to make an enemy of Poseidon somewhere in the middle of his life; his last few journeys had been made the long way around, through Egypt and Israel, Syria and Turkey.

_The last attack had been too close, the basilisk had plainly been given my location and sent to find me, it was no chance encounter. I realised then that I would have to bargain because I couldn't continue to hope that he would give up and leave me alone. They say that the memory of the gods is long, and every year I get older, lose my strength and agility. Sooner or later, I would run into something I could not kill._

_I prayed to Artemis for guidance, and she sent a vision. To the north a man, old and grey. In the morning I left the coast and started north. It was over a week's journey, to that man and when I arrived, he had died two days before. My heart was weakened by the disappointment but I searched through his few belongings and I found the ritual._

Sam picked up the pen beside his hand and started writing.

_To summon Zeus, I burned the body of a white animal over an open fire. From the ashes, I mixed my blood and the powder of the tears of the fire of the father of gods. I drew out the trap, in shape like a shell, with the mix and burned the herbs of offering, ash from the sacrifice, bay laurel and sage, twigs from the olive and wine. In the centre of the trap a great, black bull appeared and I made obeisance, requesting his help. He transformed into a towering man, his eyes the colour of lightning and his countenance harsh, but he took pity on my story and gave me a key, fashioned of a milky green stone to pacify his brother._

Sam drew out the trap, as the legacies had drawn it from the hunter's journal, and leaned back in the chair. They could summon and trap him. Getting the god to accept poison, that was a different matter.

* * *

"What do we need?"

"The ashes of a white animal burned over an open fire. Tears of fire from the father of gods. Some of the summoner's blood to mix with them and draw out the trap. A few common herbs."

"White animal?" Dean looked at him.

"Any white herbivore will do," Sam said, tapping the book. "We can get a dead lamb from the butcher, burn the body and use the ashes."

"And the … what was it? Tear of fire –"

"Tears of fire from the father of gods," Sam repeated.

"Fulgurite?" Dean asked. Sam nodded.

"I think so."

"Okay then … where do you want to lay the trap out?" Dean said.

"Same factory Abaddon picked?" Sam suggested. Dean nodded in agreement.

"Plenty of room there," he commented. "You two get the butcher run. Hayley and me'll handle the B&E for the stone."

"When do you want to get started?" Sam asked him.

"Not much point starting until after Prometheus and Oliver have died and come back," Dean said to him. "We can start in the morning, I guess."

Sam nodded.

* * *

Dean watched them as they sat on the long sofa together; Oliver between them, Prometheus telling his son a story, his gestures dramatic, Hayley's eyes crinkled with held-in laughter, the boy openly smiling.

As far as families went, he thought, they had plenty of problems, and they always would. They looked okay, though, right now. He looked up as Sam sat down in the chair next to him.

"Never going to be a normal life for them, is it?" Sam said quietly, looking past his brother to the family.

"No," Dean said. "Even if we manage to break this curse."

"Family is the one thing people hold onto through everything," Sam said. "You were always right about that. Wars, persecutions, gods, nature … doesn't seem to matter. They find each other and stay together and protect themselves however they can."

"Not always," Dean said, refusing to be drawn.

"No," Sam agreed. "Not always, but way more surviving than dying. And look at them … they're not thinking about the next bit, just right now, what they've got right now."

Since he'd just been thinking that, he couldn't argue, but he wasn't going to get suckered into agreeing either, Dean thought.

"Mom made a deal to have her family," Sam pressed. Dean's brows drew together.

"She was young, she didn't know what she was doing," he said brusquely. "If she'd been older, she wouldn't have done it."

Sam turned away, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. "You don't know that."

"No, I don't," Dean admitted. "But I hope she wouldn't have."

"You'd rather have not existed at all?"

"Hell yeah, than go through what we have?" Dean looked at him. "Don't you?"

"No," Sam said, shaking his head. "I'm glad I've known you, known Dad, even at the cost we've paid, even with everything that happened."

"Then that's where we're different," Dean said heavily, getting to his feet.

* * *

"So we need to get a white animal?" Prometheus looked up at Sam questioningly.

He nodded. "Butcher in town will have one. Let's go."

Dean tossed him the car keys and they walked down through the war room and up the stairs.

"We need to find some fulgurite," Dean said to Hayley, opening the laptop. "Someplace close. Last time we needed to get it, we had to break in to –"

"Here," she said, her fingers slipping beneath the collar of her shirt, hooking out a necklace and lifting it over her head. "The central piece is fulgurite."

She handed it to him and he looked down at crazed white crystalline stone in the centre.

"I worked for a crystal shop for awhile," she said, by way of explanation. "They used to sell these as 'Tears of the fire of the Father of Gods' – guess they read the same mythology as everyone else. Fulgurites were a big favourite with the new age crowd, all that energy from the lightning, gods, whatever, frozen for eternity in stone. They're cheap enough."

Dean looked at her, smiling tightly. "In … uh … crystal stores?"

"Yeah, you knew that, right?"

"Sure, yeah, right," he said, closing the laptop with a sigh. "Thanks."

"Dean," she said. "From all the accounts, would you say that Zeus has one particular weakness?"

He looked at her, thinking about it. "Well, he can't seem to keep it zipped up for long," he said slowly. "Is that what you mean?"

She looked away, nodding. "Yeah, I got that too."

* * *

"No!" Prometheus looked at Hayley incredulously. "Absolutely not!"

"All of the accounts – mythological and the transcriptions – agree, he drops his guard around a woman," she argued with him, glancing at Sam for support.

She'd found the long evening gown in one of the bedrooms upstairs, black velvet with a high, collared neck and a plunging back, and had styled her hair into a very soft, almost Grecian fall, the bangs swept back, the sides gathered up. She looked completely different in the get up, Dean thought angrily.

"She's right, Prometheus," Sam said with a shrug. "Lechery is pretty well the outstanding characteristic of Zeus."

"That makes it better?" Dean hissed at him. "I thought you wanted to keep these people safe?"

"I'm the only one who has a chance of getting close enough to give him the poison without him being suspicious, and you know it," Hayley said.

"Even if you could, the risk is too high, Hayley," Prometheus said, looking away. "If he thought he was being played, you'd be dead before you knew it, before any of us could do anything about it."

"What could make him suspicious?" she asked, looking between him and Dean. "They are multiple reports, even up to this year, of women summoning him to get his favours."

"And Sam, you found a single happy ending to those stories?"

"Well, most of them didn't have the faintest idea of how to summon him –" Sam hedged.

"Just the ones we think did," Dean snapped.

"No, but –"

"No buts," Prometheus said. "Just no."

"They didn't have hunters and a god providing back up," Hayley argued, shaking her head. "He's my son, Prometheus," she added, looking at him. "I'll do what I have to, to protect him."

Sam looked at his brother. "Even she can't get him to drink, a scratch with the poison on her nails will do it – more slowly than ingestion, granted – but it'll still work."

"And she'll be a pile of charcoal on the floor!" Dean's voice rose. "And Oliver won't have a mom."

"He'll be in the trap," Hayley said. "Won't he? Without his power?"

"That doesn't mean nothing's gonna happen."

"Dean, Prometheus, there's a risk, for all of us, no matter which way we do this," Sam said logically. "We'll all be there. This way, the risk is lessened –"

"For us, not for her!" Prometheus protested, looking at her.

"For everyone," Sam insisted. "He'll be in the trap. We'll be out of sight. So long as he thinks it's a routine … thing," he swallowed the word he'd been about to choose. "He won't get suspicious. And if he drinks the wine, we can step in and offer the antidote for him to recant the curse."

"Which doesn't prevent him from reinstalling it – or worse, once he's free and realises that he's been tricked – again," Prometheus said tightly.

"Except that the poison is there forever, and you'll have the antidote which you agree to provide once a year, on the condition that you and Oliver are allowed to live your lives," Sam said.

Prometheus scowled at the floor. "This is a bad idea."

"I agree," Dean added, looking at his brother.

"If it even looks like going south, then we'll step in, overpower him in the trap and force the poison down and wait for him to die." Sam looked at Hayley. "We don't have Artemis' arrows, and even if we could get them in time, she would have to shoot them. The bow can't be used by us. This is the only way I can see that we can do this with the least amount of risk."

"He is treacherous, Hayley, and stubborn and proud," Prometheus said to her. "If it even looks like he's not going for it, get out."

She nodded. "I will. I promise."

He looked at Sam, shrugging reluctantly. "Alright."

* * *

Dean drove the little silver compact, the rain-slicked road shining in the headlights. He glanced at Hayley, sitting silently beside him, staring at through the windshield.

"You okay?"

"There's a part of me that's just sitting in a corner, staring blankly at the wall," she said, her tone wry. "I know it's all happening … it's just … not what I imagined when I thought about where I'd be at thirty two, you know?"

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. "Yeah, can't see those curve balls."

She looked at him. "And you do this … all the time … how do you stay sane? I mean, do you blow off steam to friends? To a shrink? What?"

He was silent for a moment, and she looked away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to –"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "It's okay. We … uh … we don't really think about that way."

"How do you see it? If that's okay to ask?"

"It's a job, I guess," he said. "We grew up with it, trained for it from when we were kids."

"Oh my god," she said softly. "Did you – how did you feel about that?"

He turned his head to look at her. "Back then, it was better. It was … I don't know if I could explain, or if I would want to. But it was different. I loved it back then."

"What changed?"

_What hadn't_, he thought sourly. "We lost some people, family and friends. The price was too high."

"Is that what Sha– Prometheus meant?" she asked him curiously.

"I guess." He saw the driveway of the factory ahead and slowed down. "I tried to get out, a while back. It didn't work out and I – I find it hard to imagine now."

"How to be close to people again, you mean?"

For a second, his fingers tightened on the wheel, wondering if he'd been so transparent that she'd picked up on that.

"I went through that, after I ran away," she continued, her gaze fixed to the droplets lit up on the windshield. "It seemed like a huge risk, and when Oliver started … I just thought, well forget about ever having anything good again. But, you know, even though it's nowhere near like everyone else's lives, and never will be, these last few days, all of us together, that feels real … and it feels good. I don't want to give that up."

Dean parked the car alongside the building and turned off the engine, looking down at the wheel in front of him.

"You think you can make that work?" he asked finally, looking up through the windshield.

Hayley nodded. "I think we can, the three of us together. I think we can make anything work if we can stay together."

"I hope you're right."

Headlights washed through the car, wanly lighting up the interior as Sam pulled in beside them in the black car.

"Time to rock'n'roll."

* * *

Sam knelt on the floor, the thin brush making a slight scratching noise as he painted the mixture of ash and blood and stone over the concrete. To one side of the long, wide room, Hayley stood with Oliver and Prometheus. Dean walked through the place slowly, fixing the layout in his mind. The trap would not last indefinitely, only one full pass of the moon, then it would be weakened enough for the god to break through. Not that that mattered particularly, since if they didn't get this finished before about three a.m. Prometheus and Oliver would die again and it would take hours for them to resurrect.

If Hayley couldn't convince Zeus that the deal was the best he was gonna get, they'd have to kill him and do it as fast as possible. Prometheus had carved out a short spear and three short stakes from a lightning-struck tree they'd located. The fire-hardened tip was coated in the poison. He thought his best chance would be getting in and personal, rather than attempting a throw. Chances of success were better than average. He shook himself and walked back down to the room, pulling the linen bag from his pocket and taking the brass bowl from Hayley as Sam nodded and got to his feet.

Setting the bowl beside the trap, Dean emptied the ingredients into it, and turned, giving Hayley the matches. She set two goblets on the floor next to the bowl, filling them with wine and adding the poison to the one nearest the trap.

"You ready?" he asked her quietly. She nodded, looking down at the box of matches in her hands.

"You think anything's off, anything at all, you go straight to the door," he said, gesturing to the big door at the end. "Take Oliver and stay out there until we come out, okay?"

She lifted her chin, pulling in a deep breath and looking at him. "Nothing's going wrong."

"Good," he said approvingly. Prometheus and Sam had already withdrawn to the dark shadows around the room's walls. He walked quickly to the side, slipping behind the bulky frame of a wall mounted crane.

Standing alone, her skin pale against the black velvet of the dress, Hayley lit the match. She dropped it into the bowl and stepped back as it ignited, a column of blue-white fire reaching for the ceiling and burning to nothing in seconds. Thunder rumbled outside, softly at first, becoming louder as the cloud built up and successive bolts of lightning hit the building, strobing the room with their light, flickering through the skylights in the roof, the walls shaking as the thunder built up and up in a deafening crescendo.

Hayley threw up her arm and stumbled away as a bolt hit the glass above the trap, smashing it and arcing down to the ground at the centre of the blood design, crackling with power, as thick as a man's body, the tendrils crawling along the metal frames of the building, of the machinery it held, twisting and sparking as if it were alive. The smell of ozone filled the room, an acrid, biting scent of burning metal and storm fronts over the ocean.

Turning her head back to the trap, she saw a tall man standing in the centre of the trap.

"Well, it's been a while since I've been trapped by a beautiful woman," he said, smiling at her.

_Pull it together_, she told herself, forcing herself to walk slowly back toward him. Pull it together and convince him.

"I didn't believe it would work," she said, stopping as she reached the bowl.

"Yes, the problem of your times, my dear, faith is … what was the term I heard recently? Oh yes, faith is … 'so five minutes ago'," he answered her, looking down at the goblets. "Do you have a reason for … wanting … me here?"

She picked up the goblets, looking at him. He was old, in a way that seemed to suggest eternity, that he had reached a certain age and could not age any further. Bright blue eyes twinkled from under strong brows, even, white teeth revealed between full lips as he smiled warmly at her.

"I would ask a favour," she said, stepping across the first line of the unicursive trap.

"A favour?" he repeated slowly, rolling the word in his mouth. "Come closer, so that I can see you clearly."

She stepped across the lines, glancing down at the lines painted on the floor. "I read … I read that you will grant favours to those you liked."

"Did you now?" He looked down at her feet. "A little closer, my eyesight isn't what it was two thousand years ago."

She took another step and stopped, holding out the goblet toward him. "If you liked them well enough," she said, looking up at from under her lashes.

"Oh yes," Zeus said, his hand lifting. "Yes, I was very generous to my conquests – and I'm assuming that's what you're offering?"

His hand snapped out and he gripped her wrist tightly. "Of course, between the lack of faith and the lack of humility, I don't think I'll be as generous with you, as lovely as you are." She dropped the goblet as his fingers bit into the tendons of her wrist, crying out as his hand forced her arm behind her.

"Come out, the poisoned cup didn't work and hiding in the shadows isn't going to save her, or you," he said conversationally.

"Don't!" Prometheus burst from his hiding place, half running toward the trap.

"Did you really that this would bind my senses as well as my power, Prometheus?" Zeus tut-tutted. "And it will not hold me forever."

"Let her go."

Zeus smiled. "Of course."

He slashed across Hayley's arm with a long fingernail, the cut opening as he pressed the flesh around it and her blood dripping to the floor. "Tell your friends to come out."

Sam walked out and Dean shot out of the shadows as the god turned to look at his brother. He'd crossed the trap, the lightning-struck short spear in his hand and rising as Zeus spun around, throwing Hayley to the floor, her head cracking on the concrete, and catching the wood in one hand.

The blood from her wrist had crossed four of the lines as Dean fought to keep hold of the spear against the immortal's strength, but the wound on her head was bleeding too, and the trickle crossed the last line.

"Mommy!" Oliver screamed from the doorway, running into the room. Prometheus twisted around.

The spear turned to ash in Dean's hand as the trap was broken, and Zeus raised his hand, a crawling lightning bolt branching into three lines and hitting them, lifting and throwing them back across the room.

"You brought a child, Prometheus?" Zeus looked at him disbelievingly. "Or … is this one your own?" He gestured with a hand and Oliver was swept across the room, Zeus' hand gripping his shoulder as he was dropped in front of him.

Dean landed on his shoulder, rolling aside as his head snapped around to look for Sam. He nodded when he caught his brother's eye and they sprang to their feet together, running for Zeus. The force that grabbed them yanked them backward off their feet, slamming them into the wall and holding them there tightly enough to make it difficult to breathe.

In the doorway, Artemis stood, her hand raised as she looked at them. Tall and lean, she wore close-fitting black pants, tucked into boots, a fitted leather jacket over a tight black shirt. In the clearer light, Dean saw that she was striking, straight dark hair framing an oval face, dark eyes and full mouth, her expression coolly appraising as she met his eyes.

Zeus glanced around and smiled. "Have you met my daughter? Gentlemen, this is Artemis."

He turned back to Prometheus, stepping over Hayley and lifting a hand, the lesser god jerked to his feet, his gaze going to his son's face.

"This is the son of Prometheus, and he is cursed to die every day," Zeus said quietly, looking down at the boy's face. "I must admit, I could never have conceived of such a terrible fate for a child so beautiful. But this is why we must allow room for happy accident, when the Moirae weave their thread."

"No, you cannot –" Prometheus said, staring at the god. "He is an innocent!"

"As you are not," Zeus agreed readily. "And his pain shall be a thousand-fold on you, Prometheus, his eternal, ever-lasting pain will carry from one plane to the next until you wish to rip the heart out of your chest."

He glanced over his shoulder. "Artemis, dispose of them."

Turning back to Prometheus, he smiled. "You know, I think this may be better than my original conception."

Artemis walked to the hunters held against the wall. "Move."

The force holding them vanished and Dean felt his weight on his feet again, looking at her bitterly. She stared back at him coldly, her gaze cutting to the corridor behind them. He turned and started walking.

* * *

"So you know who this is, walking behind us?" Sam said to him as they turned the corner.

"Don't know, don't care," Dean muttered, wishing his brother would shut up so that he could think for a few seconds about how to get them out of there.

"It's our goddess, the goddess of hunters," Sam said, an edge to his voice.

Dean shot a sideways look at him. "Well, that's fascinating."

"See, she's who we pray to for courage when hunting the gorgon, or the minotaur," he continued relentlessly. "Of course she's not really worth worshipping any more, having lost her step an' all –" He glanced back at her, half-smiling.

Artemis lifted her arm and swung it toward the wall of the corridor and Dean and Sam were lifted and slammed face first into the cinderblock, pressed tightly there.

"The hell I have," Artemis said flatly, behind them.

"Really, Sam? You're trash talking a god?" Dean managed to get out, wondering if the grating sound he could hear in his face was the cheekbone cracked apart again.

"Still full power? Really?" Sam ignored his brother. "So why'd it take you seven years to track down Prometheus?"

"He was hiding," Artemis reminded him.

"Hiding? From you?" Sam's voice dripped with sarcasm. "The god of hunters couldn't find a shack in Montana? Or maybe it's just that you didn't want to find him."

Artemis' hand shifted forward slightly, grinding both harder against the wall.

"Your father is going to curse that child to die over and over, just like Prometheus," Sam forced the words out, spraying a little blood over the wall, the sharp edge of a molar having cut through the inside of his mouth.

"Don't worry," Artemis leaned close to him, the bright blade of her knife sliding down his cheek. "He'll come back again. I like you."

"He's in love with you, you know," Sam said quickly. "He told us."

Dean grimaced, feeling his ribcage creaking loudly as the pressure against them increased for a moment. He didn't know what the hell Sam was doing, but he had the feeling that the goddess would kill them with the next hard push into the wall.

"You're lying," she said, stepping back from Sam and looking at him doubtfully.

"Okay, sure, yeah, I mean … whatever you want," Sam said.

"What did he say?" she asked, glancing from the back of Sam's head to Dean and back. Dean saw the uncertainty in her face.

"He said that it wasn't the first time he'd gotten free of the mountain and that you'd let him go free as long as you could hide your tryst from the old man," Sam said.

"The hell he said that," Artemis snarled. "His brain is mush."

"Oh yeah?" Sam thought quickly. "Then how did I know?"

He didn't, not really. Prometheus hadn't said anything about her. He'd felt it though, in the way he hadn't spoken of her, hadn't elaborated on what had happened the times he'd escaped before. And her interest confirmed it.

"I mean, have you spilled to anyone?" he asked her abruptly. "Homer? Issiad? Herodophus?"

Her silence was an answer, Sam thought. "Of course not. You were afraid that your father would find out that you fell for the person he hates most in this world."

He could sense her thoughts, in some strange way. Sense the struggle between obedience and her heart, duty and love. "You know what? Go ahead and kill us. And then let your father slaughter that child over and over again."

The force against them eased off and they both took deep breaths.

_The meadow had been sweet and clean, bright with flowers and birds and sunlight. Prometheus had been lying next to her, propped on an elbow, his eyes on hers._

"_You always hated his tyranny," he'd said softly. "And you help them, to hunt, to find the weapons, the solutions to the monsters he and the others have created. You can't pretend that you are willing to leave them helpless in the dark?"_

"_He is my father, Prometheus,' she'd said, looking away._

"_And even a father can make bad decisions, Artemis," he'd pressed her. "Can make choices that afflict his children, that confuse them and hurt them."_

"_He has supported humanity so long as they give him – us – the proper respect."_

_He'd shaken his head. "Once, perhaps. Not now, and you know it. Now he demands obeisance, tribute, the best of everything, like a rich miser desiring ever more gold."_

"_Let's not talk," she'd rolled over and pressed her fingers against his lips. "Please? Just be … here together?"_

Dean stepped back as the force holding them vanished. He turned around cautiously, looking at the dark-haired woman staring at the floor.

"You can make him stop it," he said to her. "You're the only one who can."

* * *

In the centre of the room, Zeus stood in front of Oliver, tame lightning spitting and arcing between his hands. On the floor, Prometheus was trying to rise, and behind Oliver, Hayley stood rigidly, her eyes wide with fear.

"This has to stop, Father," Artemis said, the bow raised, the oak arrow nocked and drawn.

"Stop?" Zeus looked around at his daughter, his voice harsh. "I'm only getting started, daughter."

"You've done enough," she persisted, the arrow head unwaveringly centred over her father's heart. She wouldn't miss. She'd never missed.

"I am doing this for us," Zeus said more moderately as he noticed the arrow. "For our kind, Artemis. He is the reason we're here … and not ruling the world as we once did, as we should be. He is the reason they have forgotten all about us! Daughter, do not forsake me now."

Artemis steeled her heart against him. "Let them go! All of them!"

"I am your father, and you will obey me," Zeus demanded, turning to her.

The arrow drew back to the point of her jaw as she looked at him. "You were once my father," she said sorrowfully. "Now, you are someone else."

She watched his face, the tension in the muscles around his eyes, the flicker of his eyelashes. She looked for his tells, the tiny things that would tell her if he would strike or if he would accept that his death was in her hands. She looked … but she didn't see them in time.

Zeus swung around, clothed in lightning, thunder filling the room as his hands reached toward her, fingers widely stretched and then closing sharply into fists.

The lightning vanished. The bow and arrow fell to the floor with a light clatter in the sudden silence in the room. Artemis was gone.

Hayley felt the power holding her dissolve and she ran for Oliver, catching him up in her arms and racing for the cover of the crane. Prometheus rolled to his knees as Sam bolted for the last piece of lightning-struck timber, sharpened into a short stake. Dean dove toward the bow automatically, the fingers of one hand closing around the riser, those of the other nocking the arrow in a fluid motion as he came to his feet, and pulled back on the string.

It was a weight against him. Like a tidal wave, like a mountain, the bow resisted him as his muscles and tendons and bones strained and creaked. He shut it all out, jaw clenched tight, drawing back the last few inches as pain shrieked through his shoulders and neck, his back and chest, arms and hands, but the white fletching of the arrow reached the point of his jaw, and the arrow was centred on the god's chest. He released it, seeing not the flight, but the feathers bright against Zeus' shirt. Light lanced out from around the arrow's shaft, not blood, and it glowed under the god's skin, leaking from his eyes and mouth in a pulsing rhythm that brightened with every passing second.

Sam had stopped, staring in open-mouthed surprise as Dean dropped to his knees, the bow loosely held in one hand. Prometheus had turned, staring at the man behind him as well. Both had seen it. Neither could believe it.

"Impossible," Zeus stared at Dean, his eyes wide and shocked. "You … Herakles?"

He fell to the floor, the coruscating light inside him growing more and more powerful as his eyes stared blankly at the ceiling above. Prometheus staggered to his feet, stumbling across to Hayley and Oliver and dragging to the big door.

"Get out, now!" he cried to Sam, gesturing at Dean who was still on his knees, gaze fixed on the dying god, pain fluxing through him in time with his pulse.

Sam nodded, spinning around and running to his brother. "Dean! Snap out of it, get moving."

Glancing up at him, Dean's face was expressionless and Sam felt his heart skip a beat at the blankness in his brother's eyes. Then Dean blinked and they cleared, awareness returning to them. He picked up the quiver of arrows that lay beside him, and let Sam drag him to his feet, his breath hissing out as each step shook the torn muscles and damaged tendons.

Sam slammed the postern door behind them, pulling Dean across the walkways and down the stairs, across the ragged grass verge to the cars as the building suddenly seemed to be filled with the energy of a supernova, an excruciatingly bright white light bursting out through every crack and crevice, through every window and doorway, every screw and nail hole, under the eaves and along the foundations.

When it disappeared, the last of the overcast daylight seemed very dark. Dean looked down at the bow in his hands, wondering how the hell he'd drawn that weight. The cost would be high, he thought, unable to lift his arms, every indrawn breath agonising, moving his head impossible. He looked over at Prometheus, the god's arms wrapped around Hayley and Oliver tightly, the three of them smiling with relief, eyes closed as they drew comfort from each other.

But worth it.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Dean groaned as Sam's fingers gently massaged the paste into his back. "God, Sam, not so hard, you're tearing holes in me!"

"I'm hardly touching you," Sam said, scooping out another load of the healing paste and smearing it over the mottled and bruised skin. "What the hell possessed you to even try and use that bow?"

His eyes tightly closed, Dean shook his head. "I don't know. I wasn't thinking, just reacting."

"You did it, though," Sam said slowly. "You actually drew it."

"Yeah, don't get too excited about it, Sammy, it nearly fucking killed me."

Sam looked down at him. "No mortal can draw the huntress' bow, Dean. The myths, the legends, hell, even all the hunters' accounts that the order has transcribed and saved, they all agree to that."

"What do you want to hear?" Dean said, flinching as a pat of the paste touched his neck. "Maybe no one ever tried?"

"What'd Zeus say to you, when he died?" Sam asked, realising that Dean wasn't interested in thinking about the impossibility of what he'd done.

"Uh … he said 'impossible' and then he muttered some word I didn't get."

"Do you remember it?"

Dean frowned. "Not … Hera … something, I think."

"Heracles?"

"Could've been," Dean said. "Why?"

"That's the Greek word for Hercules," Sam said quietly, moving around in front of him.

"No kidding?" Dean said, and Sam hid a smile at his expression. "You think he thought I was Hercules?"

"I don't know," Sam hedged, smearing more of the thick, sticky paste over his brother's arms. "But Hercules saved Prometheus in the mythology, killed the eagle that was eating him alive every day."

"Awesome."

"I'm going to have to wrap some gauze over this or it'll just get over everything you touch."

"How long do you think it'll take before I can move?"

"Not sure," Sam told him. "Hold still."

"You think that Prometheus and Hayley'll be alright?" Dean said, his voice softer. Sam glanced at him, recognising the vagueness in Dean's face. His pain threshold was unbelievably high but eventually it did reach the point where overload was inevitable and he'd pass out.

"I hope so," he said, working faster. "Dean, stay with me a bit longer, okay? I'm nearly done."

"Okay." Dean said agreeably. "Their life, man, it's not going to be easy."

Sam scooped another handful and worked it down over the other arm. "Maybe that's not the point."

"What d'you mean?"

"Maybe what'll make it worthwhile is being there for each other, not if it's easy or hard."

"How'd you know Artemis had a thing for Prometheus," Dean asked, frowning suddenly. "Prometheus didn't say anything about it."

Sam shook his head. "I don't know, intuition? Luck. I got a sense that there was a history there, between them."

"Where'd she go?"

"Tartarus, I think," Sam said absently, winding the thin gauze bandage around Dean's arm, from wrist to shoulder. It would stop the paste from rubbing off, maybe trap a little more heat around the sore and damaged tissue.

"When he died, would she get free?"

"I don't think so, but maybe." He looked at Dean's face. "Why?"

"She was hot," Dean said, eyelids half-closed. "She liked you."

Sam smiled. "Well, you've got her bow and arrows, if she turns up looking for them, you can take first shot."

Dean didn't answer, and Sam looked down seeing his eyes had closed. "Dammit, Dean, stay awake a bit longer!"

There was no answer and he eased his brother back onto the bed.

* * *

Sam woke abruptly and looked over at the clock beside the bed. One hour. He felt tired and irritable, but he sat up, swinging his legs out of the bed and rubbing a hand wearily over his face. He wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, no matter how tired he felt.

Getting up, he walked to the bathroom, leaning over the sink and turning on the taps, splashing the cold water over his face. He felt a deep rumble in his chest, and closed his eyes, coughing into the running water, the paroxysms getting harder, shuddering through him. He opened his eyes and saw the red turning to pink as the water diluted the blood, the wracking cough carrying on for a few minutes before it settled down.

He rinsed out his mouth and filled a glass, swallowing mouthfuls until he couldn't taste the thick, copper tang in his throat any more. Turning off the tap, he looked into the mirror above the sink, seeing the fine red capillaries in the corners of his eyes, and as he turned his head slightly, the eight-ball haemorrhage against the outer corner of his left eye.

God, what was happening to him, he wondered, looking at it. He dried his face and walked out of the bathroom and downstairs into the library, heading for the stacks.

* * *

Dean sat up in his bed, leaning back against the heaped pillows. He could hear the coughing from his room. This last week, the healing paste had done its job. He was stiff and sore, but he could move around now, at least. He listened as the taps were turned off, heard the soft thump of Sam's feet down the hallway and on the stairs.

He looked around the room. "Cas, you got your ears on?"

He waited for a few moments, hoping to see the angel – even too close and in his space would have been a relief. But there was nothing … just silence and a sense of aloneness that he hadn't felt for a while.

"Listen, you know I'm not one for praying," he said, looking down at the floor uncomfortably. "In my book it's the same as begging."

It wasn't quite the truth, he thought. He'd prayed whenever the game had gotten too big for him to handle on his own, whenever Sam had been in the worst danger. It had been like begging, but there were times when he just didn't care about that. Times when he threw aside pride without a second glance, focussed entirely on getting the help he needed.

"This is about Sam, and I need you to hear me," he continued, his voice thickening slightly as everything he'd been holding back seeped upward and outward. "We are going into this deal blind and I don't know what's coming, or what it's going to bring for Sam."

He pulled in a breath. "Now he is covering pretty good, but I know that he's hurting … and this one was supposed to be on me."

Sam should never have killed the hound. And whatever it had been, that seizure or spasm after he'd said the Enochian spell in the little room, that had accelerated things, taken them beyond the point where he could've stopped his brother. Sam hadn't talked about it, and he didn't know why, exactly, only that his brother stopped talking about things when he was scared. And the more scared he got, the less he would talk.

"So for all that we've been through, I'm asking you, you keep a lookout for my little brother, okay?"

If anything, the silence was somehow louder. He looked around the shadowy corners of the room, the odd pockets where the lamp light didn't reach. He thought of Purgatory, looking for the angel, praying to him every night, keeping alive the thin thread of hope that Cas hadn't died, hadn't been ripped apart by the monsters, hadn't found a way out and left him there to die on his own.

_It wasn't your responsibility to save me._

Maybe not, but he'd felt it anyway. He'd left too many people behind, left them to die, and each death had torn out another piece of him, he couldn't afford to lose any more.

"Where the hell are you, man?"

Had the angel returned to Heaven, to stay there, not even an explanation or goodbye, forsaking their friendship as if it had meant nothing? Or had he been killed, as his orders had been to kill Archie?

Either way, he'd never find out, never know for sure and there'd be another thing he couldn't grieve for, couldn't put to rest.


	34. Chapter 34 The Devil You Know

**Chapter 34 The Devil You Know**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

The long, high-ceilinged room was only half-lit by the overhead lights, the corners and some of the cases and shelving in shadows and a murky dimness that even his eyes couldn't penetrate too well. The order had taken a bulk order in some funky old lightbulbs, and he hadn't found the rest of the stash yet, and the bulbs in the lower levels were burning out at a steady rate.

Dean stopped by a case and looked at the number. He held the corresponding catalogue for this part of the collection and he found the number listed. LHW001499432. The Spear of Destiny. The listing contained a short description. He'd finally figured out that the prefix 'LHW' meant 'lethal holy weapon', and the numbers had started at 000000001. It was some collection here.

"Spear of Destiny," he read, in a soft mutter to himself. "The Roman spear that killed Christ on the crucifix. Mixed legends and myths about its power. Claims of being able to protect the bearer from any evil, able to kill any corporeal or non-corporeal entity with a touch. Bears the blood of Christ on the tip. May be the only weapon capable of killing the archangel, Lucifer. See related reference LHM003949493, Wandering Soldier."

Looking at the small four inch spear tip in the glass case, he could see the faint rust-coloured patterns around it.

"Could've used this three years ago," he said, turning away in annoyance and walking to the next case.

He'd woken four hours ago, snapping upright from a nightmare and had decided against trying for more sleep. He'd been getting dressed when he'd heard his brother, coughing down the hall. Two days ago, he'd found a glass with a red line around the rim. But Sam still wasn't talking about it.

_You told him you'd follow him_, he reminded himself for what was possibly the five-hundredth time. _Told him you'd trust him when he said he was good_. That the trust he'd extended warily and with conditions wasn't being met was bothering him more than he was ready to admit just yet.

A part of that was the waiting. The paste Sam had mixed up had done a great job, and aside from the residual stiffness that he was slowly working out, he could feel himself getting antsy about doing something again. A job. Out there. Fighting evil. Saving people. All that good stuff. The thought brought a derisive inward snort, only faintly edged with bitterness. He'd only started looking at the order's collections because he couldn't think of what else to do, and he'd figured that knowing what they had was probably going to be a good idea, somewhere down the track.

"Dean?"

Sam's voice sounded distant and Dean put down the catalogue and walked to the door of the room, sticking his head out and looking down the hall.

"Here!"

"Where?" His brother sounded a little closer.

"Collection rooms!" Dean yelled back as he walked down the hall in the direction of the stairs.

He stopped at the end of the hall as Sam came around the corner. "What?"

"I think I've got a job," his brother said, turning on his heel and heading back up the stairs. "Weirder than usual."

"How can it be weirder than usual?" Dean asked discontentedly, surprised to find that he didn't actually want to leave now that the opportunity had arisen. What he wanted was to find the magic book that detailed all the tablets that God had seen fit to write down, already transcribed and filed neatly under W for Word. And he wanted to know what the hell was wrong with his brother before they headed out into the big bad again.

* * *

"Look at this," Sam said, throwing himself into the chair at the polished walnut table. "Dead bodies showing up all over the mid-west last week. Benton, Indiana … Downer's Grove, Illinois … uh, Novi, Michigan … and then again, last night in Lincoln Springs, Missouri."

"What are you looking at?" Dean asked, rubbing his eyes. Could've used the extra four hours, he thought absently. His gaze dropped and he saw the trash can next to his brother. It was filled with tissues. He looked up and saw the box on the table next to Sam's elbow.

"VICAP, got tagged because of the MOs," Sam said.

"This is the punchline, right?" Dean glanced back at the trash can. They'd been screwed up when they'd been pitched in, but he could see still the red on most of them, soaked through the thin layers of soft paper. "The bit that's us?"

"Right," Sam said. "Each of the victims had severe burns around their eyes, hands and feet. Puncture wounds in the backs of their hands. Oh, and their eyes and internal organs? They were liquefied."

"That sounds like us," Dean allowed, dragging his gaze from the trash to his brother's face.

"Yeah," Sam said, glancing back at the screen. "There's no link between the victims. One was a real estate agent. The second victim was the priest for the parish. Third victim was a local historian. Last night was a teacher –"

"Those wounds sound … religious," Dean said, thinking about them.

"Yeah, to me too." He looked up and saw the wary expression on Dean's face. "What's the problem?"

"Nothing," Dean said, shifting in the chair. "You feeling ready to get back into the angel/demon thing?"

Sam tilted his head slightly, weighing Dean's words against the decided unease he could see in his brother's body language.

"You were the one who just about ripped apart every muscle and sinew you have drawing an immortal's bow, remember?"

"Yeah, right," Dean backtracked. "No, I'm okay, I just wanted to make sure, you know, that you're fine … as well."

"Dean, you've asked me that at least fifty times in the last week. I'm good. Same as last time you asked."

"Right, okay then." He looked at the table.

Sam leaned back in the chair. "So, what happened to trusting me to tell you if there was anything wrong? That was you, right?"

Dean suppressed the urge to throw the contents of the trash can over the table. "Yeah, no. That's right. You're good. I get it," he said shortly, getting up. "Let's get over to Missouri."

"Yeah."

* * *

_**I-80 E, Missouri**_

There probably wasn't much that was more aggravating than being caught trying to wriggle out of a promise by your kid brother, Dean thought morosely as he stared at the wet concrete ahead of them. On the other hand, he had to wonder if he wasn't being chumped out by everyone, because he seemed to be the only one left who remembered about keeping promises, and being loyal, and letting people fucking know what was going on.

_Sure about that?_ The annoying voice in his head asked. _There were certain occasions, after all, where you didn't –_

He looked over at Sam. "Which one is in Missouri?"

"The teacher," Sam said, pulling the file from the pile beside him and opening it. "Anne Morton. Taught history at the high school, had an interest in the history of the town, apparently."

"Who are we talking to?"

"Her husband. He found her body," Sam grimaced as he read the police report.

"That'll be fun."

"That's why they pay us the big bucks."

Dean snorted and reached for the stereo.

* * *

_**Lincoln Springs, Missouri**_

Sam stood in the living room of the house awkwardly, looking down at his notebook, Eric Morton standing in front of him.

"We just a few routine follow up questions about your wife," he said, lifting his gaze. The man looked like he'd been hammered by the recent events of his life, and he felt a stab of pity for him. Behind him, he could hear Dean moving around the room, looking at everything. "Did she have any enemies?"

"Agent, honestly, I can't think of a soul who'd want to hurt her," Morton said tiredly. "Even after everything that happened."

"Everything that happened?" Dean turned to face him.

"About a week ago … something … changed," the man said slowly. "In Anne. She was out of sorts. Not herself at all."

Sam's brow creased up a little. "Out of sorts – how?"

Morton sighed. "It'll be easier if I show you."

He turned around and they followed him out of the room and down the hall.

* * *

The basement door was opposite the kitchen doorway and a flight of wooden stairs led down into a large open area, roughly lined and floored in concrete tiles. Workbenches and shelving stood around the walls and in the centre a ping-pong table held a roughly constructed model of a town, with dozens of small plastic bags filled with what looked like soil, suspended over it.

Sam frowned as he saw the street, familiarity nagging at him. "Is this … is this a model of the town?"

Morton nodded unhappily. The replication had been made of milk cartons and shoe boxes and cereal boxes, all haphazardly smeared with grey primer and to scale.

"She stopped sleeping," he said to Sam. "She stopped eating. She started going out in the middle of the night god knows where. I tried to talk to her." He gestured a little helplessly at the model. "But she would just mutter to herself."

"About what?" Sam asked, looking at the bags hanging from the ceiling.

"Something about an orchard?" Morton said uncertainly. He shrugged. "Finally I just followed her one night. She went to the playground," he said, pointing out the location on the table. "Over here, at the elementary school. And she started digging."

Sam glanced across at Dean. He shook his head very slightly.

"I followed her for three nights. She would leave with these little bags of dirt," Morton said, looking at the bags over the table. "These represent the holes she'd dug in the ground, all over town."

"These holes," Dean asked. "They were around six feet deep?"

"No," Morton said, shaking his head. "She would dig for hours. She never broke a sweat. It was like watching a machine. She would dig straight down … twelve feet, maybe fifteen feet. At first, the county was understanding … then they started to get nasty."

"Did you notice anything else?" Sam asked, looking at the number of bags. Fifteen foot deep holes all over town. He was surprised she hadn't been locked up.

Morton looked down at the model, dragging in a breath. "The third night, when she came home, I confronted her. She was on the phone –"

"Do you know who she was talking to?" Dean asked him. He shook his head.

"No." He looked from Dean to Sam. "But I know what I saw. And it wasn't my Annie. After I called her out … her eyes … they turned black."

He looked away, his face tense. "I know I must've imagined it, I know I did. But I left, I went to the bar, I had too much to drink … I couldn't get that image out of my head," he admitted, staring down at the table. "And by the time I came back …"

His voice trailed away as his shoulders slumped dejectedly. "I should've stayed."

Dean glanced at Sam. She'd been found at the kitchen table, the report had read. Tied to it, puncture wounds through the back of both hands, strange ones. The coroner hadn't been able to identify the object used to make them. Her eyes had been burned out of the sockets, and all the internal organs had been soup.

"Mr Morton, we'd like to take another look at this model –" Sam started to say. Morton nodded, lifting a hand.

"I'm moving into my sister's place today," he said, pulling a set of keys from his pocket and tossing them to Sam. "I can't be here anymore. Just leave the keys in the mail slot when you're done."

"We will. Thank you very much for your time," Sam said, putting the house keys into his coat.

"We're sorry for your loss," Dean added quietly, turning back to the stairs. He stopped suddenly. "Oh, when your wife began to change, did you notice a smell in the house?"

Morton looked up at him, his face twisting slightly in confusion. "The sulphur?"

Dean looked at Sam.

"I couldn't figure out where it was coming from … how did you know?" the man asked, doubt in his eyes.

"There have been three other victims of this killer, sir," Sam said smoothly. "We're just verifying the reports."

"Oh. Do you, uh, know where it came from? The smell?" Morton asked vaguely.

"No, sir, I'm sorry."

* * *

"So … someone's killing demons," Dean said as they walked down the stairs from the porch and onto the street. "Feels like we should send a thank you note."

"Question," Sam said, ignoring the comment, his brows drawn together as he thought back over the conversation. "Who's killing demons? And why? And how?"

"That's three questions, Sammy," Dean retorted, walking around the car to the driver's door. Sam looked at him across the roof.

"And since when does a demon possess someone and start digging in the dirt? You ever heard of that? A demon possession that's not purely for the fun of it? Does any of this seem right to you?"

Dean shrugged. "I like the part about killing demons," he said lightly. "That seems right."

Sam sighed. "I need to get a trace on that call."

"I need to eat," Dean said. "Can we do both at the same time?"

"Yeah."

* * *

The Impala pulled up in front of another neatly painted house, two suburbs away. Dean and Sam got out, Sam still talking on the phone.

"Well, thank you very much for all your help, I really appreciate your time. Right. Bye." He closed the connection and looked at his brother as Dean came around the front of the car.

"So, real estate guy's wife said he was acting weird," he said, putting his phone in his pocket. "Historian's husband said the same, just got all obsessive, and then … weird." He gestured vaguely. "Aah … no one saw any black eyes, but still … you know, where there's smoke … you know. I wonder what they're all looking for."

They walked up the path to the house, climbing the steps to the porch. Dean flicked through his notebook.

"Well, Wendy Rice was the last person to speak to Anne, so let's see if she can tell us," he said, closing the notebook and looking at the number on the wall.

Sam knocked lightly at the glass-paned door. Demons searching for something. It wasn't unheard of and Crowley'd had his minions searching for a lot of things lately, but not using random people to do it, and not attracting someone or something that was killing them off with the efficiency of a Howitzer.

The door opened and both men smoothed out their expressions to identical bland smiles as Wendy Rice looked at them.

"Special Agent Lang," Sam said, holding up his badge. "This is my partner, Special Agent Tandy. We'd like to ask you a few questions about Anne Morton?"

"Oh, uh … of course," Wendy said, lifting a hand uncomfortably to the rollers in her hair as she looked at him. "Please come in." She stepped back, opening the door wider, a slender woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in workout grey leggings and a couple of layers of brightly-coloured soft stretch shirts.

Dean walked past her, followed by Sam, both looking over the house discreetly as they walked into the living room off the hall.

"Would you, um, like some coffee?" Wendy closed the door and followed them.

"Black, please," Dean said, nodding. Sam glanced at him and caught the flicker of his brother's eyelid.

"Black would be great, thank you," he said to Wendy.

"Just make yourselves comfortable, I won't be a minute," she said, backing out of the room.

"What?" Sam looked at his brother, who was standing next to a bureau. Dean looked at him and tapped the lined notepad sitting on top.

"Notes," he said in a low voice. "Wendy's conversation with Anne, the night she died."

Sam walked over and skimmed down the page. The handwriting was thin and spidery, with a lot of abbreviations. He backed away to the sofa as they heard footsteps in the hall.

Wendy came in, holding a plain wooden tray with three white mugs on it. She looked at them as they sat down, putting the tray on the coffee table.

"I'd never met her before she called the other night," she said, picking up the mugs and passing one to each.

"Now, why was she calling you?" Sam asked, holding the mug.

Wendy looked at Dean, then back to him. "She was looking to find an original map of the city," she said. "She wasn't very specific about what she wanted it for, but she did mention that she was looking for an old orchard, one that had gone missing in the rebuilding."

"Rebuilding?" Dean asked, putting the mug on the table.

"The town has been rebuilt several times," Wendy said confidingly. "We're mostly on a flood plain, and the river has flooded six times in the last four hundred years." She put her mug down and shrugged slightly, getting up and walking to a cupboard near the door. She pulled out a thick binder and brought it back to the table as she continued. "You'd think the county would have moved it back from the river, but it's always rebuilt over the top of the old site. The river just … sweeps it away, every hundred years or so."

"And I guess the original records – locations, history and so on – that was all lost?" Sam looked at her.

"Yes, a few times now," she said, opening the binder. "My dissertation is on the town's history, you see, I've been working on piecing together what the town was like originally, and through all the changes over its history. I've put together a map that I think is probably accurate as anyone will get." Flipping through the sheafs of paper that filled the binder, she pulled out a printout of a map, pointing to a central location on it. "This is the old Juchubiac orchard here. It was planted when the town was settled and was lost in the first flood. I only found out yesterday, it's where Downey meets Bond Street."

"Crossroads," Dean remarked to no one in particular, looking at his mug. "Shocker."

"Did Anne tell you why she was interested in the site of an old orchard?" Sam leaned toward Wendy slightly.

She looked at him uncomfortably. "No. We set a time to meet … and she never showed."

"And I read about her in the paper," she added sadly.

Neither of the two men could think of any significance a demon would find in an orchard planted four hundred years ago, one that had been swept away by a flood no less.

"Anne's assistant called this morning, though," Wendy said, taking a breath and looking up at Sam. "Asking if I still had the map."

"Assistant?" Sam and Dean exchanged a look. Eric Morton hadn't mentioned an assistant and they were both damned sure that the demon possessing her hadn't required one.

There was a sharp rap on the door, and Wendy looked down at her watch, a little flustered. "Oh, that's probably him. Maybe he can help you?"

She got up and hurried down the hall to the front door. Sam and Dean got to their feet, following her.

The three men standing on the stoop when Wendy opened the door didn't look anything like anyone's idea of research assistants, Dean thought as he caught a glimpse of them past her. The youngest, on the left, was dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a thin, bony face. The one in the middle was much older, fading strawberry-blond hair cut short above a fair-skinned face that was as hard as stone. On the right, the tallest was staring down at Wendy, with short dark hair and a cold, hard-eyed look. They looked like the neighbourhood thugs.

All three turned to him and Sam as they came up behind Wendy and their eyes flashed to black, corner to corner.

"Are – are you –" Wendy started to say when she noticed the change and what came out instead was a long, wavering scream.

The tallest shot inside, heading straight for Sam. The dark one lunged for Wendy, grabbing her arm and the front of her clothes and lifting her easily. The blond swung at Dean, his fist passing through the air as Dean dropped under him and jack-knifed back up, taking his weight and lifting and throwing him across the sofa. He turned with the throw and vaulted the sofa after him.

Wendy felt herself thrown bodily from the hall into the living room, her back hitting the coffee table, smashing it beneath her, the sudden smell of black coffee filling her nostrils as her vision rippled in and out, greying at the edges. She was barely of the young man as he strode over to her, plucking the map from the debris that was scattered over the floor around her.

Sam grimaced as he felt the strength of the demon-possessed man he was fighting, his forearms beginning to ache from blocking the fast blows. The man rushed him again, both falling backwards through the glass-paned doors dividing the living room from the dining room, Sam's shoulder taking the brunt of both their weights on the hardwood floor, his air whistling out of his chest as the man landed with both knees on his chest. He couldn't drag in enough air to do anything but block, his muscles losing their strength as he tried to shift the man's weight off him.

Behind the sofa, Dean's fingers curled around the hilt of the knife and he raised it, looking coldly down at the man under him. The demon exited in a thick coil of charcoal-grey smoke, spiralling up to the ceiling and plunging back down, into the mouth of Wendy Rice. He watched her back arch up, fists clenched by her sides as the demon forced its way inside. She sat up abruptly, her eyes black, then she was on her feet, heading for the door, and he rolled off the blond man, racing after her.

He turned around at the hall. She'd vanished. The light that filled the dining room caught his peripheral vision, and he twisted around, reaching the shattered glass doors in time to see the angel release his grip on the demon that had been attacking Sam, one hand clenched in the big curlers on Wendy's head.

Back. Just like that. He couldn't take it in. Trenchcoat and everything.

_Castiel._

Sam looked up at the angel disbelievingly as Cas turned away, dragging the woman behind him. He sat up and saw Cas' gaze flick briefly to Dean before he passed him, heading for the kitchen. His brother looked like someone had pole-axed him, he thought, rolling to his feet, wincing as his shoulder took the weight.

"He's got good timing, I'll say that for him," he said, walking over to Dean.

"Yeah." Dean nodded vaguely, brows drawing together suddenly as he took in Sam's favouring of his right side. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Sam said, walking past him to the living room. "Just landed awkwardly."

Not nothing, Dean thought, turning to follow him to the sofa. From the back it was clear that the bruising had gone deep. He let out his breath slowly. One fucking problem at a time.

Cas came out of the kitchen, his face hard and drawn as he looked at them. "The other demon escaped," he told them bluntly. "I've bound the one I caught in a devil's trap, I'm going to interrogate it now."

He turned back to the door and Sam looked up at him. "Wait a second, Cas – how 'bout you answer some questions first," he said, shunting the pain aside. "Like, where the hell have you been?"

The angel stopped in front of the door, his back to them.

"You heard me, didn't you?" Dean said, looking at him.

Sam looked around curiously. "What – you prayed to him?"

He watched Dean's face tense a little. That he knew of, that his brother had told him, Dean'd only prayed maybe twice in his life. Both times had been when he'd been unable find another way out of a situation that would have harmed his brother. Sam let his gaze fall. Did Dean know about what was happening to him? Was that why he'd asked for help from the angel?

"Yes," Castiel said sharply, turning back to them. "I heard you. But that's not why I'm here." He walked to the armchair opposite the sofa and sat down, looking past them. "I've been hunting demons."

Sam looked at his face. He should've known it – the burned out eyes and liquefied internals, the strange four-edged puncture wounds on the victim's hands – angel swords had that peculiar configuration, four edges meeting at the tip.

"So this is you …" Sam said. Cas nodded. "Why?"

Uncertainty filled the angel and he looked inwards, to the bright and shining room of reflections and the red-haired woman who sat behind the glass desk there.

"_What should I tell them?"_

"_The truth," Naomi said, getting up and walking around the desk. "Most of it, anyway. Maybe they can get us closer."_

"I've been searching for the other half of the demon tablet," he told the men, his gaze refocussing on them.

Dean leaned forward. "Without us?"

Cas flinched inwardly at the accusation in the man's words. "I've been trying to help, Dean," he snapped defensively. "And in my search, I've found out that Crowley has sent out demons to find Lucifer's crypts."

"Lucifer had crypts?" Dean's brows shot up as he looked at the angel.

"Well," Cas said, straightening a little. "He was trapped in the cage for over three thousand years. And he was by no means idle during that time. He heard things. He sent out the demons he created to find things," he said slowly. "And he hid them away again, for his own purposes."

"What kind of things? What are they looking for?" Sam stared at him.

"_It would be more helpful if they knew everything," the angel said to Naomi._

_She turned to him and shook her head. "They cannot be trusted."_

"_But –"_

"_Lie, Castiel," she told him firmly._

_He felt something in him shifting, sliding like a snake through his mind. Angels were not built to lie. They were not built for deception. Once, there had been no need for it. Lucifer had taught them that it was possible, the first of his crimes, teaching the angels to lie and deceive and manipulate each other. He could feel a wall, smooth and impermeable and impenetrable. It had not been there before. He couldn't remember much from before._

"_Tell them what we discussed," Naomi insisted, staring at him._

_Obedience, before all else. The two orders were conflicting. They were creating a schism. He didn't know what would happen when that widened._

"They're looking for a text, an old one. It would allow them to decipher Crowley's half of the demon tablet," he said, pausing to look from Sam to Dean. "Without the prophet."

"Demonic decoder ring, in Crowley's hands. Awesome," Dean said, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

"The crypts were … lost, over time," Cas said. "Only those closest to him knew their location."

"Well, that wasn't Crowley," Sam said, looking at Dean. "So how'd Crowley find them?"

"His demons have been possessing some local people, people with special knowledge," Cas said, uncomfortably aware that the longer he had to explain the situation, the more holes were appearing in his story.

"Well, that'd explain the crazy room at Anne's house," Sam muttered to himself. "But how'd they know where to start looking the first place?"

"I don't know," Cas said, getting to his feet. The questions, the evasions, it was reminding him of something, something that he'd tried hard to forget, tried to not look at for a long time. Lying to his friends. Hoping they wouldn't piece together the clues that were there. Hoping they'd never find out. It had not worked out that way before. "I'm hoping the demon in the kitchen is more knowledgeable than the others I've interrogated."

He walked to the kitchen door and went through, and Sam let out a breath, looking at his brother.

"He's definitely off," Sam said to him.

"Off?" Dean turned to look at him. "He hasn't been right since he got out of Purgatory, and we still don't know how he got out of there."

"You know," Cas' voice came through the closed door. "I can hear you both. I am a celestial being."

They looked at each other uncomfortably and got up, walking to the door and going into the kitchen.

* * *

The small room had been only slightly modified. A devil's trap, drawn in chalk marked the linoleum floor beneath the table and chair where the woman who had been Wendy Rice sat. Her hands were bound to either side of the table, the chair centred in the trap. The angel stood behind her.

"Sam and Dean Winchester," she said slowly as they leaned against the counter looking at her. "You made quite an impression on our Wendy, you know. The thoughts she had about you two … well … mostly about you, Sam." She smiled, tilting her head to one side as she considered him. "What can I say? She had a thing for s-s-smutten chops."

Dean straightened up. "Alright, you douche bag –"

Cas drove the tip of the angel sword through her hand, and red-gold light boiled through the flesh and tendons, lighting up her wrist and arm as he left it there. The demon shrieked, throwing her head back, the tendons leaping out in bold relief in her neck. Cas pulled the sword out and she slumped in the chair.

"Who told you about the crypts?" he asked her, walking around to the other side of the table.

"I thought angels were supposed to be the good cops!" she snarled at him, her breath catching and hitching in her chest.

Cas looked down at her and drove the sword into her other hand, his expression unchanging.

Her scream filled their ears and Dean glanced at Sam, both looking back to the demon.

"Wait! Stop!" she yelled at him, her hand stretched out, her face twisted in agony. "STOP! We have a hostage!"

Cas pulled the sword free and waited.

"It's one of Crowley's … pets," she said quickly, struggling to draw in enough air to speak. "She's at the Murray Hotel, down by the interstate." She looked from Cas to the Winchesters. "She knows where all the crypts are. She saw them all, back in the day."

Sam looked at her. "And she told you about the code key?"

"What code key?" the demon snapped.

"Hey!" Dean stepped to the end of the table, looking down at her. "You think he's the only bad cop in this room? We _know_ what you're really looking for, so stop lying!"

He watched her expression shift, from anger to a slowly growing confusion, and the sight of it set off his alarms.

"No. I'm not lying," She stared at him. "We're looking for –"

_Kill it!_

Cas' hand moved without his volition, plunging the four-edged sword deep into the demon's chest. His face was lit up as the demon burned alive in the vessel, the shades of fiery gold flickering over his features, reflecting in his eyes.

Dean looked from the dead woman to the angel in astonishment.

"Cas!" Sam shouted, shocked. "What the hell was that?"

The angel pulled out the sword and turned his head to look at the younger Winchester. "It told us what we needed."

"No, she didn't – you can't just –"

"I started this hunt without you, because I didn't want anything to slow me down" Cas cut him off, his voice louder. "We have to get to the motel now."

"Now hold on a second –" Sam started and the angel vanished, the sound of beating wings and a faint scent of feathers left in his place. "CAS!"

"Cas?!" Dean looked around the kitchen. "Dammit, go, go."

He pushed Sam toward the door, and they raced through the house and down the steps, diving into the car.

"What the fuck, man?" Sam sat in the passenger seat, fists clenched at the unexpected behaviour of the angel as Dean pushed the car through the suburbs toward the interstate.

"I don't know," he ground out, running the red and swinging the car through a sea of blaring horns and braking vehicles left.

Neither of them could say out loud what both were thinking. Lies and betrayal. Superman and kryptonite. An angel doing what he thought was best, bringing a curse to the world that had almost been worse than the devil.

Tyres squealing, the Impala pulled into the kerb opposite the Murray Hotel and they opened the doors and got out, both catching the brilliant flash of light from the first storey window as they ran across the street.

"There," Sam said, hitting the lobby door with his shoulder and blinking against the pain as it rocketed through his arm and side, ignoring it when he saw the stairs in the corner.

A second flash of light outlined a door in the first floor hallway, and Dean slammed into it, breaking the lock and sending the door crashing back against the wall as they saw a man fall to the floor, landing on top of a body already down, both of them without their eyes.

Castiel stood in the middle of the room, looking down at the bodies.

"Thanks for waiting," Sam said shortly. The angel shrugged, jerking his head toward the closed door on the other side of the room.

"The hostage is in there."

Dean walked across to it, reversing the knife blade in his hand, hearing Sam's footsteps behind him. He turned the knob and pushed the door open, staring down at the small woman who sat on the floor in the corner of the room, blonde hair in rat's tails around her swollen and bloodied face. She looked up at him, and her mouth lifted at one corner.

"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" Meg asked drolly, delighted to be able to use the line.

Dean looked back at his brother for a moment, and slid the knife back into its sheath. He took the couple of steps needed to reach her, holding out his hand unwillingly. Meg looked at the expression on his face and her smile widened slightly, followed by a wince as the movement pulled at the cuts and sent a little more blood trickling down her cheek.

She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet, looking down at her. Whoever had been working her over knew their stuff, he thought clinically. Nothing life-threatening, but all guarantee to hurt like hell and keep hurting, the bones bruised, maybe fractured, but nothing broken too badly.

"Alright," he said, shifting aside to let her precede him through the door. "What's up, Meg."

She walked across the room to the bed, sitting down and blocking out the throbbing ache in her head and shoulders, arms and abdomen, taking a deep breath as she watched Dean and Sam sit down opposite her. Her gaze flicked up to Castiel. The angel stood stiffly behind the two men, his eyes cutting away as hers lifted to them.

"So, I gotta ask," Dean said, staring at her. "What's with the hair?"

"Awww, thanks for noticing, Dean," Meg said fondly, smiling at him. Her voice became bright and brittle. "But this wasn't my idea. It was Crowley's. And it's just another reason I want to stab him in the face."

"You've been telling Crowley the location of Lucifer's crypts," Sam said accusingly.

Meg looked at him, her face twisting a little. "What can I say? I needed a break from the constant torture," she said dryly. "And I'm one of the very few who did visit all of them, with my father."

"Lucifer was trapped." Dean frowned at her.

"Not my spiritual father, Dean," Meg said, lifting a hand and pressing lightly against the throb in her temple. "My actual father. Azazel. He was looking for things too."

She let her hand drop wearily as she turned to Castiel. "But don't worry, I haven't exactly been giving them the Glengarry leads."

The angel ignored the unknown reference, extrapolating her meaning from the context … and her smirk.

"You mean you've been lying to them," he guessed.

Meg nodded. "I just get them in the general vicinity. Enough time's passed, and enough's changed, that they bought it."

"Why lie at all?" Dean asked her.

"Buy myself some time," Meg said, her eyes widening a little at him. "Enough time for them to make a mistake, for me to find a way to get the fuck outta here."

"Wait, so, a bunch of innocent people died, so you could buy yourself some time?" Sam asked her.

She felt a flash of white anger zap through her at the ridiculous piety of the remark.

"Hi. I'm Meg. I'm a demon," she said coldly to him. "And Sammy? Until you've spent a year in Crowley's torture chamber, getting worked on every single fucking day, I would suggest that you keep your opinions on the relative morality of survival techniques to yourself. I seem to recall a lot of rumours about the innocent lives Sam Winchester was taking, trying to pump himself up strong enough to –"

"Meg." Dean's voice was low and implacable and she stopped, looking at him sourly.

Castiel cleared his throat. "And what have they have found?"

Meg turned her head to look at him, making an effort to let go of her anger. "Bupkis. Every crypt has been cleaned out. Dusty. Empty." She smiled at him. "And on top of that, someone kept picking up the trail and icing demons. I'm guessing that was you, Castiel."

His gaze slid aside and that gave her the answer.

"But … Crowley just keeps sending more," she continued. "He's hell bent on –"

"_She's going to tell them the truth," Cas said to Naomi, his arms crossed defensively over his chest. "Do I have to kill her?"_

_The thought was unpleasantly complicated. She was a demon, and not just any demon, but an old demon with enormous power of her own, even cut off from the souls of Hell. There was a history between them. A strange and patchwork history of being enemies … and of working together, to defeat the King of Hell. The feelings that had stirred when he'd seen her walk out of the bathroom, limping and hurting and filled with pain that glowed in his vision, were not the feelings of an angel._

_Naomi hesitated. To kill the demon now would mean losing the location. The choice was not simple. The Winchesters would know the angel had lied to them. But the tablet was more important. Much, much more important._

"_She does know the location of the crypts," she said to herself. "But working with a demon is … unclean."_

_She wasn't sure if she said it to convince Castiel or herself. It would not be the first time. Nor, probably, the last._

"_We could use her," Cas said abruptly. "As Crowley did."_

_He watched the woman think that over. "Agreed," she said._

"– finding that angel tablet," Meg said, looking at Sam.

Sam's brows rose slowly as he took in the words. Beside him, Dean's gaze flicked to Castiel and back to Meg.

"Did you just say … angel tablet?" Sam asked her disbelievingly.

"You know … I get why Crowley calls you Moose now," Meg said sardonically as she looked at him. He ignored the insult and lifted a brow at her.

"Yes. Angel tablet," she said. "Crowley found out Lucifer had it, figured it was stashed in a crypt."

Dean looked at Castiel. The angel stood against the windows, his features dim and unreadable with the light coming from behind him. Not again, he thought uneasily. He didn't want to go through that again. He needed someone to trust.

"Well," Cas said uncomfortably, his gaze brushing Dean and past him to Sam. Both brothers were looking at him narrowly now. "This is news to me as well."

"The demons I interrogated … they must have been lying about their true intentions," he continued awkwardly. Angels don't lie. The wall shivered slightly as he tried to look into their eyes.

"Really?" Dean asked, doubt edging the word. "'Cos I saw you 'interrogate' that demon. You were more than persuasive."

Castiel looked away and Dean felt his stomach drop.

"You're both missing the point," Meg interrupted, looking at Dean. "I lied to them, which means they're –"

"Digging in the wrong place," Sam said softly.

She smiled at the reference briefly. "But not for long. They'll be back here soon."

Dean looked back at the angel. He did not want to leave this hanging, his doubts about Cas filling him and making everything distorted again.

"So … who's up for fleeing?" Meg asked, looking from him to Sam.

"She's right," Sam said, knowing that mistrust would be eating through Dean. For the second time. There wasn't enough time for them to get it sorted now. "We need to find those crypts before they do," he continued. "Meg, you're the only one who's been there."

Castiel nodded. "We need your help."

Meg looked at him, her gaze wandering to Dean and then to Sam. When had everything gotten so damnably complicated, she wondered dryly.

"Any of you dummies got a map?"

Sam looked at Dean. "The model?"

"We got the keys, and it's probably about as safe as anywhere else, for the moment," he agreed. "Let's roll."

* * *

Meg sat next to Castiel in the back seat. The angel sat close by the door, staring silently out the window. Inside himself, he could feel stressors, things giving way under the pressure he felt. He didn't know why or how or how he was going to fix it. He couldn't remember things of the past year, couldn't remember details of events that he must have participated in. The sense of atoning, of his penance, had gone. Completely. He didn't know why.

Dean glanced back at him through the rear view mirror as he drove them back across town. He wasn't mistaken, he knew. Cas had lied to them, and the reason didn't matter, any more than it had mattered the first time. It wasn't like trust came so easy to him that he could ignore it, that he could pretend to himself it didn't – that it wasn't a concern.

He pulled up in front of the Morton house and got out, shunting his thoughts aside. They would find this goddamned crypt and the angel tablet and they would get it to Kevin and he would deal with the angel later on.

Sam unlocked the front door and they followed him down to the basement, Meg's low whistle the only sound in the room when they stood around the table holding Anne Morton's scale model of the town.

"There," she said, looking down at the miniature street. "That's where the crypt was."

"What's there now?" Sam asked.

She turned to him. "Do I look like Google to you?" she asked him dismissively. "None of these buildings were here, way back in the day, so figure it out, genius."

She felt hot and light-headed and hurting. Turning away from the table, she walked a little unsteadily back to the stairs. "Is there any booze in this dump?"

Castiel watched her stop by the stairs, leaning against the rail for a moment before she began to climb them.

"I should make sure she doesn't leave," he said to the Winchesters.

"Sure," Dean agreed without looking at him. "You do that."

They listened to the sound of his footsteps receding to the stairs and climbing after the demon, the basement door at the top closing with a soft click.

Sam pulled out his laptop as Dean paced around the table, watching his brother's restless agitation from under lowered brows. He was beginning to understand some of the things that drove him. Some of things that were necessary to him. Trust was one of those things. Dean couldn't take too much of being fucked over in that department.

"He lied to us," Dean said a moment later, stopping beside him and folding his arms over his chest.

"Yeah. Maybe," Sam said pacifically. "But I can kind of understand why."

He looked up at Dean and back to the screen. "I mean, an angel tablet? If the demon tablet is mankind's protection against demons, with the bombs and the traps and shutting the gates of Hell … what's going to be on the angel tablet?"

Dean looked around and saw another chair by the workbench. He walked to it and dragged it to the table, dropping it into as he considered that question.

"The Levi tablet gave all the details about killing the levis, right?" he said slowly to his brother. "And the demon tablet is the same. All about Hell, all about the demon weaknesses, the way to shut them out forever …"

"Yeah," Sam said distractedly, zooming through Google Maps down to the street level of the town.

"The angel tablet probably has all the protection people need against angels," Dean said softly. "Maybe how to keep the dicks up in Heaven where they belong instead meddling down here with people's lives." He let his thoughts drift a bit further. "What if God put all this down so that people could gradually shut out all the crazy stuff that keeps fucking us over and trying to kill us?"

Sam found the address, and replayed his brother's last comment back belatedly. "Like a how-to manual for getting rid of evil?"

Dean shrugged. "I don't think there's going to be a tablet for getting rid of the evil that humans are capable of, but yeah, maybe everything else, maybe all the stuff we hunt?"

Sam looked at him. "We need to get that tablet to Kevin."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face. "No argument."

* * *

Meg sat on the sofa, taking a long pull on the bottle in her hand as the angel irrigated the pus-filled wounds with clear alcohol, her nerves and muscles twitching with the pain.

"These wounds have festered," Cas told her, wrapping a clean gauze dressing around the rope wounds on her wrists and binding it in place with a bandage.

"You really do know how to make a girl's nethers quiver, don't you?" she quipped, slurring a little on the sibilants.

"I am aware of how to do that," Cas admitted prosaically. "Although it doesn't usually involve cleaning wounds."

Meg felt the alcohol back the pain off a bit further and herself relaxing a little more. The world had been turned upside down and inside out in the last three years, she thought vaguely, and now she was sitting next to an angel who was binding the wounds that a demon had torn into her flesh … and she felt no desire whatsoever to kill him.

At first, teasing him had been a way of getting him off balance, confusing and alarming him. It'd been fun to watch him trying to process all her innuendo and the double or triple meanings inherent in everything she'd said to him. Then it had stopped being fun in the same way. And she'd no longer wanted him off-balance. And she couldn't work out why.

"Why are you so sweet on me, Clarence?" she asked him softly.

The angel wound the bandage around her arm firmly. "I don't know," he said honestly. "And I still don't know who Clarence is."

"Would it kill you to watch a movie? Read a book?" she said curiously, tipping the bottle to her lips again and swallowing a fiery mouthful.

"A movie? No," he said, reaching for the scissors. "But a book, with the proper spells, yeah, it could theoretically kill me."

"You know, you're much cuter when you're shutting up," she said, looking at him.

For a moment, he lifted his gaze, his eyes meeting hers. Both felt the odd reaction, neither mentioned it. Opposites, Meg wondered. Angel and demon. About as opposite as anyone could get. She watched him drop his gaze and let her breath out softly.

"So, which Cas are you now?" she asked him. "Original make and model … or crazy town?"

He tied off the bandage and looked at her, wondering how to answer that. "I'm … just me."

"So your noodle's back in order?"

He nodded. "Yeah, my … noodle remembers everything. I think it's a pretty good noodle."

"Really?" Meg said, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. "You remember everything?"

Cas looked at her. Her expression had changed a little, he thought. She was clearly remembering something that she didn't think he did. The memory came back to him, and he looked down. Warm, soft body tightly pressed against his. Her lips, softer than he could've imagined, demanding, exciting. Her breath in his mouth and her arms around him and thoughts that had flooded his mind and made it difficult to fill his lungs.

"If you're referring to the Pizza Man incident, then yes, I remember that," he said slowly, looking at her. "And it's a good memory."

She smiled, ignoring the pain in her face. She liked him. As absurd as that was, it was nevertheless true. She liked him a lot.

* * *

"This is it," Sam said, zooming down to the building. "The crypt is under that warehouse. He flicked to another screen. "Abandoned. Factory closed shop six years ago."

"Good times," Dean said. He looked at the stairs thoughtfully. "You think we can trust those two?"

Sam shrugged. "No. But what choice do we have?"

* * *

"You ever miss the Apocalypse?" she asked him.

"No," Cas said, smiling. "Why would I miss the end of times?"

"I miss the simplicity of it," she admitted, waving the bottle for emphasis. "I was bad. You were good. Life was easier."

Cas rolled his eyes.

She snorted at the human expression. "Well, it was. Now it's all so messy." She downed another swallow of the rum. "I'm kind of good … which sucks. And you're kind of bad –"

She stopped speaking and Cas looked at her curiously.

"Which is actually all manner of hot," she finished quietly, staring at him. "We survive this? I'm gonna order some pizza and we're gonna move some furniture around … you understand?"

He leaned forward, his mind searching for the associations that would make the words make sense. "No … I –"

He looked into her eyes and saw the invitation in them and abruptly they came and his eyes widened a little.

"Wait … actually, yes," he said. "I –"

"Alright, we got an address and this place is giving me the creeps" Dean said from the hall. "Let's roll, campers."

He walked out, and Sam looked at the odd, still tableau for a moment then followed him.

"It's a date then?" Meg asked the angel lightly.

"Yes," Cas said. "A date."


	35. Chapter 35 Neither Fish Nor Fowl

**Chapter 35 Neither Fish Nor Fowl**

* * *

The motel room was clean but shabby, the carpet thin and knotty under their feet, the fabric of the upholstery and the linen threadbare. Dean looked mistrustfully at the wobbling chairs and uneven table and sat on the edge of the bed.

Meg was sleeping on the other bed. Castiel stood by the window, staring out at the gathering nightfall. Sam was in the bathroom, slathering the healing paste over the multi-coloured hues of his shoulder and willing it to heal faster.

"Why'd you lie to us, Cas?" Dean asked the angel.

For a moment, he thought Cas wouldn't answer, then he turned to him, the dark blue eyes a little lost.

"I don't know," he said, shifting a shoulder in an uncertain shrug. "I was afraid of too many knowing about the tablet, I suppose, afraid that it would be exposed."

"Exposed," Dean repeated. "By us."

Cas sighed. "You had the demon tablet and lost it, Dean. Is it so unreasonable?"

"Yes." Dean looked away. "No."

He wasn't sure. Wasn't sure that Cas was telling the truth now. Wasn't sure it wasn't a reasonable line of action to take. Just wasn't damned sure of anything.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Cas said, walking to the kitchen counter and leaning against it. "I know that … given our history … you must find it impossible to trust me now. I know that your trust has been abused too many times."

The apologetic and conciliatory tone of the angel's voice was going to fuck him up more than he could handle right now, he thought, looking away.

"Don't palm me off with that 'you're too precious for this world' shit, you sonofabitch," he said to Cas. "Are you setting us up here?"

"No," Cas said, relieved that that, at least, was the truth. "I'm not."

Sam came out of the bathroom, his face set as he ignored the pain and pulled on his jacket. "Dark yet?"

Dean nodded and stood up. "Wake Meg, we're going."

* * *

"So, this is it?" Meg asked, looking around as they walked from the car down to the river and the entrance to the building. "Basement?"

"And beyond," Castiel said, feeling eyes on him. He could no longer tell if they were real, and outside of him, or the eyes he could feel inside all the time.

Dean stopped by the doors. "Alright, Cas and I'll head inside and get our Indiana Jones on," he said, shifting his grip on the pair of shovels in his hand. "Sam, you stay out here with Meg, ward and lay down traps around every possible entrance."

"What?" Sam's head snapped around to look at his brother.

"We got this," Dean said, pulling the knife from his belt.

"What are you talking about, Dean, I'm not letting you go in there alone," Sam said, his gaze brushing over the angel as he stared at his brother.

"He won't be alone," Cas said mildly.

"That's not what I mean," Sam said impatiently. "Meg can hang here, watch our backs."

"Oh what, so now you trust Meg?" Dean asked derisively.

Meg looked at him, offended. "Hey, I got you this far –"

"Shut up, Meg," the brothers said in unison.

"Dean –"

"Sam," Dean cut him off, his voice a little louder. "Stop, okay? Just stop. I can hear the fucking coughing, I can see where you've been spitting up blood. Stop lying to me."

"Dean, I'm fine –"

"No, you're not," Dean said. "We don't know what's in there, and you almost let a demon get the best of you before. You're not fine."

"What happened to trusting me, Dean?"

Dean's face hardened. "The deal was off the second you started lying about being fucking fine! You haven't been fine since the first trial, that's why I called Cas."

Meg's brows rose. "Trial?"

"Shut up, Meg!" Dean and Sam said together again, and she bit back the next question.

"Dean," Sam said, checking the defensive anger that was rising. "I'm telling you, I'm okay!"

"No, you're not," Castiel said unwillingly, turning to look at him. "Sam, you are damaged in ways even I can't heal."

Sam swallowed, fighting down the sudden urge to cough, the sudden fear that filled him.

Dean looked from the angel to his brother. That was worse, he thought. Cas could heal anything. Why not his brother?

"Dean's right," the angel continued. "You should stay here and protect Meg."

Meg snorted derisively. "Protect me from what?"

Castiel looked down at her. "From the demon who wants to rip you into little pieces and chew them up."

Meg remembered Crowley. For some reason, the four of them standing there together, she'd felt safe again. More than safe, she acknowledged reluctantly.

"Alright, we'll be back," Dean said, looking at Sam. Cas walked past him and Dean held out the knife, hilt first.

Meg's eyes widened a little as she saw Sam's internal debate. Something had really done a number on the trust between the brothers, she realised. More than their usual level of conflict. And the rage that had filled Sam, when she'd met him first, that was still there.

Sam took the knife and Dean turned away, following the angel into the building.

* * *

Dean caught up with Cas as he was pushing through the half-rotted door leading to the basement. He lifted the flashlight and took point, lengthening his stride slightly to draw ahead of the angel.

"Hey, what did you mean back there, about Sam?" he asked uneasily.

"It's difficult to explain," Cas said absently, his gaze scanning over the walls and floor for weaknesses in the fabric of the building's component materials. "There's something on the sub-molecular levels, some fundamental change that I can't discern properly. There's a problem with his electro-magnetic fields –"

Dean sighed. "Okay, bottom-line it for me, Spock. Is it lethal?"

"I don't know," Cas said with a shrug. "Wait."

He stopped in front of a section of wall. Dean moved the flashlight over the blocks that had been mortared together. They were a different size and shape to the rest of the wall, he realised. Had someone else been here before them?"

"There's something behind here," Cas said, laying his hands along the wall. "Can you smell it?"

Dean nodded. A faint vagrant air brushed by him, carrying the distinctive and unpleasantly familiar odour of brimstone.

"Step back," Cas told him, and he backed to the opposite wall, starting as he hit a fire hose reel.

The angel closed his eyes and changed the frequency of the waves of energy inside the blocks and the mortar, making them discordant, the protons and neutrons and electrons dancing apart now, faster and faster. A crack appeared beneath Cas' hand, zig-zagging across the face of the wall as the stone collapsed internally, its nature altered from a solid matrix to the individual elements.

Dean lifted his arm over his face as the cracks multiplied and spread, and the blocks just began disintegrating, falling inwards and out into the hallway, stone dust and small fragments rising in the narrow corridor, a growing hole appearing in the wall.

_Didn't need those_, he thought, setting the shovels down against the wall behind him. Cas walked through the hole and he followed him, the flashlight beam flickering over a narrow tunnel, the walls crudely carved from the soft rock beneath the building, and leading to a set of stairs that went down into the earth.

* * *

Meg shook up the spray can of paint and drew a perfect circle on the concrete apron outside the door. "I took how many bullets for you guys, and you didn't even look for me?"

She straightened up and looked at Sam. "Not once?"

Sam looked back at her. It had honestly never even occurred to him to look for Meg. He'd had more than enough things to do when Crowley had left with Kevin.

"My hero," Meg said mockingly.

She looked at the door and drew out the Enochian wards carefully. "What's with all this 'trial' and being damaged crap?"

Sam finished his sigil and turned to her. "Look, no offence, but you haven't exactly been the most trustworthy person in our lives, Meg."

"You're not going to tell me," she said as he turned back to the wall. "Seriously! How am I not Team Sam?"

He glanced back at her, face screwing up a little at the comment.

"Fine," she said, looking back over what she'd done. "Whatever it is, are you okay dying over it?"

There was still no response from Sam and she decided she needed to crank up the pressure just a teensy little bit.

"You don't want to say, fine, but remember, I spent time in that walking corpse of yours," she told him. "I know all your sad little thoughts and feelings."

Sam looked at her. "That's creepy."

She laughed a little, at herself. "Yeah, isn't it? You want to know what I remember, Sam? Deep down, in the parts of you that you never let see the light of day, you want to live a long, normal life away from creepy old things like me."

"Yeah, I do," he said bluntly, and she hid her surprise at his honesty.

"I spent last year with – someone, and I know now that – it's actually possible."

Meg tilted her head to one side as she studied him. "You knew that before, Sam."

He shook his head. "No. I thought it was, and then they killed Jess and I realised we'd never be free."

"All that Azazel and Lucifer stuff is over now, Sam," Meg said softly. "You've been free to walk off the battlefield for a while."

"It didn't feel like that," he said. "Until –"

"Until?" Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him, thinking over all that she knew of him, about him, from the inside out. "Until Deano was gone as well? Oh my, you actually lost your brother too?"

Sam looked away, his jaw tightening. "Why don't we just wait quietly?"

Meg smiled as he walked stiffly past her to paint another symbol on the wall. "So … you spent the last year living in normal. With a chick?"

Sam didn't answer and she walked a little past him to see his face. "What was her name?"

The hiss of the spray paint filled the silence between them.

"Come on, you don't even trust me with a name?" she tried again. "Cut me, do I not bleed, Sam?"

He turned around and looked down at her. "Don't push at me, Meg."

"So … Dean went AWOL and some chick actually got you off hunting, huh?"

His lips thinned out as he saw the mix of pain and enjoyment in her eyes. She tormented as easily as breathing, but there was more there now, a genuine curiosity … perhaps. Or something deeper than that … a yearning for something she would never know?

"That's one rare and unusual creature," she continued, more gently. "Tell me, Sammy, how'd you meet this unicorn?"

* * *

"Stand back, Dean," Cas said as he looked at the door set into the rock. "The air will be noxious."

Dean flashed the light behind him and walked back to the foot of the uneven stone stairs, hyperventilating to fill his blood with oxygen as the angel broke through the ancient locks on the door carved from the rock. It opened and the stale air, evil-smelling and poisonous, was drawn past him as he held his breath, up the stairs and out by the draughts from above. He thought they might be sixty or seventy feet below ground level. He was surprised that the place hadn't been flooded out when the river had overflowed. There was no sign of water incursion here.

Cas turned back to him, nodding. "It's better."

He walked to the room, and looked inside, the flashlight beam moving slowly over the walls and the floor and the low stone ceiling, looking for anything that might be a booby-trap or something worse, designed to kill him when he took his first step inside. Nothing leapt out at him when he tossed a small rock into the room, feeling absurdly like Indiana Jones in that moment.

"Think we're good," he murmured to the angel beside him as he stepped into the room.

It was dark but the flashlight's beam showed him the torches, held in metal sconces around the walls. He walked to the nearest and pulled out his lighter, flicking it on and touching the flame to the top of the bone-dry wood. It burst into fire, giving off a mildly familiar scent, oil of some kind, he thought. Going to the next, he lit that one, and crossed the room to the other side, lighting two more there.

Then he turned back to look around. Perhaps forty feet by forty, the room had been hewn from the rock and lined with blocks and columns of stone, the floor smoothed, broad stone pavers, the joins filled with centuries of sand and dirt. Several chests, stone and timber, stood against the walls and in the centre a square stone block held a peculiarly shaped box, with a ridged pyramidical top. He looked at the objects, all coated with a fine, grey dust, inches thick, curiously giving them the same bland look as the Morton woman's scale model of the town. He wondered where to start looking.

"_I found it," Cas said to Naomi. She turned to look at him, her storm-wrack eyes widening._

"_Tell Winchester that the crypt is empty, then you can come back –" she said quickly. _

_Cas shook his head, cutting her off. "It's warded against angels."_

"_But you can come back –"_

"_Crowley's demons are still in town. We're running out of time," Cas interrupted her. "What should I do?"_

_Naomi looked at him. "Handle it!"_

"Dean," Cas said, pointing to the other side of the room. "That's it."

Dean turned to look at the carved box sitting on a low chest. "How do you know?"

"It's the only thing in here warded against angels," Cas told him, an edge to his voice.

Walking over to the box, Dean looked down at it. The sigils and carvings were familiar.

"Lucifer was an angel," he said. "He couldn't touch this either?"

"Safer that way," Cas said. "Move it to the altar, you'll have more light."

Dean picked up the box, surprised a little at the weight. Under the dust, it could've been stone or wood. He was glad it was wood. The angel was right, he had more light here. He could see the lock that held the lid closed. Picking up a long, wickedly sharp knife from the stone table, he slid it under the lid, levering it upwards and hearing the lock break apart under the pressure.

He lifted the lid, and saw the chunk of stone that rested inside, glancing up at Cas with a slight, one-sided smile. "Winner, winner, chicken dinner."

"Good," Cas said, relief filling him that the tablet was finally safe. The relief seemed to be outside of himself, but it was too strong to question. "Hand it to me and I'll take it to Heaven."

Dean looked at him, his fingers unconsciously curling tighter around the stone in his hands as the nerves at the back of his neck began to twitch and prickle uncomfortably. "No. We'll take it to Kevin, so he can translate it."

"Right." Cas nodded without missing a beat. "Of course, I'll take it to him right away." He looked down at the stone. "No time to waste."

The prickling sensation got stronger. "Well, he's not that far," he said, with an attempt at a smile. "I've been meaning to go check on him … bring him some supplies."

Castiel looked at him in frustration. _If the demons get their hands on the angel tablet, they'll kill us all – they will destroy Heaven!_ Naomi's voice cut sharply through the doubt he felt. Dean was wary. He'd been too eager, stirring the man's instincts. Instincts the angel knew were razor-sharp, honed by a lifetime of danger.

_I can reason with Dean_, he told himself, told Naomi. _He's a good man_.

_Kill him._

"I can re-supply the prophet, Dean," he said walking around the altar toward him.

"You know, why don't Sam and I take it to him?" Dean said, moving around the altar slightly as the angel approached him. "And you can get back to your mission. Finding the other half of the demon tablet … that is the priority, isn't it?"

_Fuck_, he thought, watching the remnants of the angel's helpful expression fall away, leaving only an expressionless chill in Cas' eyes.

"I can't let you take that, Dean," Cas said quietly.

"Can't? Or won't?" he asked the angel. He was fucking well hamstrung here, he knew, the tablet too heavy to hold one-handed, too damned important to put down and what would that gain anyway? He'd been one-on-one with Cas before. Nerdy little guy had the punch of a falling tree and a jaw like iron. He'd broken all the knuckles of his hand trying to take him.

"Both," Castiel said.

Dean walked back toward him, looking down at the stone he held. He lifted his gaze as he stopped in front of Castiel.

"How did you get out of Purgatory, Cas?"

"_There has to be another way," Castiel said to the red-haired angel desperately._

"_You've done this a thousand times, Castiel," Naomi said insistently. "Kill him. Then take the tablet and bring it home, where it belongs."_

_Kill him. His friend. The human being who had changed everything he'd ever thought or believed, who'd shown him what it meant to be truly committed to something, to truly believe that right … and good … had to triumph over evil even if the cost was everything, the man who'd trapped an archangel with him, faced off the devil, forgiven him, called to him and prayed to him for help when he would ask no one else._

"Just tell me how you got out of Purgatory," Dean said, looking at him. "Be honest with me, for the first time since you've been back, and this is yours."

Cas took another step toward him, and the angel sword slid from his sleeve to drop into his hand.

Dean looked down at the slight sound, and he felt that much-patched together and seamed trust that he'd held for the angel dissolve at the sight of the short, slender blade.

"Cas," he said, meeting the angel's cold eyes. "Cas, I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but if you're in there and you can hear me, you don't have to do this!"

The angel walked toward him.

* * *

"There's one part I don't understand," Meg said, looking up at Sam. "You hit a dog … and stopped? Why?"

Sam's gaze cut away from her as he tried to wrap his head around the question. "That whole story … and that's your takeaway?"

"No," she said earnestly. "I heard the rest … you fell in love with a unicorn. It was beautiful, then sad, then sadder. I laughed, I cried. I puked in my mouth, a little."

Sam looked at the wall, tipping his head back. When would he learn that the monsters weren't suitable confidants? When would he get that simple fact that demons had lost their souls?

Meg watched him. "And honestly? I kind of get it," she said unwillingly.

He heard the change in her tone and looked at her. "Really?"

For a moment, that tough-don't-give-a-damn-sarcastic-laugh-at-pain façade dropped from her vessel's face and he saw again the bone-deep yearning he'd glimpsed before, underlaid with a sorrow that seemed so human he almost couldn't believe it. Her eyes cut away from him, brighter than they should've been in the light of the streetlights behind them and he saw her mouth tighten.

Then it was gone, and she focussed abruptly, looking back at him. "We've got company."

Sam looked around and saw the demons walking toward them. "Back."

* * *

Castiel swung the sword and Dean lifted the rock to block the blow without thinking. When the blade edge touched the stone, light exploded from it, the reverberations from the hit racing through Dean's fingers and hands, into his wrists and up his arms to the shoulder, a tingling flush of power as if he'd touched a high voltage line for a micro-second.

Cas felt the same power travel through the sword into his vessel, shocking him to stillness for a moment as his eyes narrowed against the brightness.

"_This isn't right," he told Naomi, pacing agitatedly around the shining room. _

"_Do you realise what that tablet can do for us?" Naomi asked him angrily. The conditioning should be holding more strongly than this, there should've been no doubts, no uncertainty in the angel's mind. "For Heaven?"_

"_I won't hurt Dean," Cas said suddenly, stopping and staring at her. He couldn't. Not again._

"_Yes," she said, her voice dropping. "You will. You are."_

_The schism split then, dividing him into two. And he saw the purpose of the conflict in the orders. To fracture him from his vessel. So that another could control it. So that another could use it to act through him. He sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes in pain. He needed to get back, back into the other half of him, before he killed his friend._

"Cas! Fight this!" Dean shouted at him, backing away. "This is not you! FIGHT IT!"

In the crypt under the ground, the angel that looked like Castiel and held a part of him at least, raised the sword again, swinging it hard at the man. It hit the stone and Castiel dropped to his knees in the room of reflections, the pain flaring, an agonising supernova in his mind, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, his senses transmitted from Jimmy's body to his mind, unable to reach past the smooth and shining wall to get back there, back to the rest of himself.

_He stared at Naomi. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?"_

"_Just relax, Castiel," she said pityingly. "Let your vessel do what you know, deep down, is the right thing."_

Dean looked at him as he turned away, his head dropping.

"What have you done to me, Naomi?" Cas muttered.

"Who's Naomi?" Dean said loudly, wondering if he could get through – if he was getting through.

"_What have I done to you?" Naomi yelled at him, her hands curling into fists. "Have you any idea of what it's like out there? There's blood … everywhere! And it's on your hands! After everything you did, to us … to Heaven. I fixed you, Castiel, I've put in failsafes so that you cannot betray us again," she said furiously. "I fixed you!"_

"Cas!" Dean stepped to him, putting his hand on the angel's shoulder. Castiel lifted his head, snapping around to look at the man beside him. His arm swung out, hitting Dean across the chest, the power of it lifting him off his feet and throwing him across the crypt to hit the wall above the chest. He fell to the ground, feeling the creak and grinding of fractured ribs, a dull throb at the back of his head, the nauseating disorientation of a really good hit to the head.

* * *

'How many?" Sam asked Meg in a low voice, seeing the movement in the darkness.

"Four – no, five," she said, shifting her grip on the angel sword.

The first three rushed them and Sam moved sideways, drawing two of them after him, aware that his shoulder felt stiff and he couldn't compensate for it, would have to fight through that unresponsiveness.

Meg swung the sword, ducking under the demon's reach, blocking its attempt to stab her with the length of metal pipe and driving the sword smoothly in and under the ribs. She was aware of Sam, seeing him go down to one knee as the demon hit his right shoulder with the pipe, striking precisely over the existing injury, but she didn't have time to get to him. Spinning low, she stabbed backward, feeling the sword tip punch through the abdomen of a demon behind her, yanking it out as she rolled forward and slashed with a long sideways cut across the backs of the knees of the demon that sprang over her. It screamed in rage or pain, she wasn't interested which, and fell face down and she drove the sword into its back, rolling to her feet at the same time.

Sam had killed one demon, but his right arm was hanging loose by his side and the second demon had a long length of metal pipe, jabbing it at him and driving him back. She was running and then jumping, her knee striking the demon's arm and chest, knocking it down to the ground and following the thrust of the sword in through its ribs with her own weight.

Sam staggered backward as Meg appeared from nowhere, watching the brilliant fiery light as it flickered and died in the man under her. She got up, pulling the sword free and turned to him. From deep within the building there was a crash of thunder and they both spun around.

* * *

Dean rolled over and put his free hand on the ground, pushing hard to get his knees under him, the weight of the tablet pulling him to one side as his rib ends grated against each other. He glanced around the room, unable to see the angel and shifted the stone against his side, heading for the doorway.

Cas was in front of him. He stopped and tightened his grip on the stone. The angel's stare was almost lifeless and the thought flicked through his mind that he'd seen Cas like this before. Before he'd killed Archie.

There wasn't going to be any getting around him, he knew. He'd have to go through. The jab wasn't telegraphed at all, but the angel intercepted it anyway, hand closing around his fist like a vice, and Castiel twisted his arm along the fulcrum of the joints. He heard the crunch at the same time as pain flooded his nervous system, wrist and elbow joints both shattered, twisted past their limits, the shoulder joint popping out of its socket and the stretched and torn muscles bleeding under the skin.

Dean let go of the rock-enclosed tablet as he was forced backward and down, and the outer covering smashed on the concrete floor, freeing the harder stone within. Inside the crypt, there was a crash of thunder and a brilliant bolt of argentine light and every torch was blown out, pitching them into a darkness lit only by the flickers of blue-white light that crawled around the surfaces of the walls and ceiling.

Castiel swung his fist, and Dean's head snapped back from the blow, his skull ringing with the force, old fracture lines from past injuries opening and widening. He could feel blood trickling down his skin, the sensation featherlight compared to the depth of pain along the side of his head.

The second blow was harder, and he realised that he was going to lose his vision as spots danced in front of his eyes and a grey mist gathered at the edges. The automaton in front of him wasn't Cas, he thought incoherently. Wasn't the angel, at least, not all of him.

_Not him, so push hard, get through_, he told himself, rocking back onto his knees and looking up at the angel. _Get through any way you can_.

"You want it?" he challenged, watching the angel's head turn to look at the tablet. "Take it! But you're going to have to kill me first."

Castiel looked back down at him, his expression unchanged.

"Come on, you coward, do it!" he snarled. "Do it!"

The angel's fist hit him along the jaw and he heard the break, inside his head, falling back and yanked forward by the angel's grip on his broken arm, a groan forcing its way out through his teeth as agony sheeted through him.

He didn't see the next one, just felt the weight of it against his cheek, along the eye socket, starbursts against the blackness and a great rolling wave freezing up his muscles, making them twitch and jump.

_Castiel looked up at Naomi, crouched in front of her, his face pale with shock. "Please …"_

"_End this, Castiel!" she commanded him and down in the crypt, his vessel obeyed, the connection between them thin and growing thinner._

"Cas …" Dean spat out a mouthful of blood, feeling it coursing down the back of his throat, its coppery taste coating his tongue and filling his nose. He looked up at the angel, seeing him flat and dimensionless, one eye already swollen closed, the other trying to focus. "This isn't you, this isn't you …"

"_Bring me the tablet," Naomi leaned close to him, the spittle flying from her lips with the force of her order._

There was nothing solid left in the side of his face, Dean thought, feeling the bones move and shift under the last blow. The eye socket was smashed, and he thought that the bone fragments would probably work back in time. Very little time. Everything hurt, a sea of pain, a morass of nerves shrieking at him with all that was wrong, all that was broken. He would pass out soon, he knew. And then Cas would kill him.

He'd wanted to believe that the angel had come back okay. That what had happened in the past could stay in the past and he could have his friend back. Christ, he'd lost them all, one after another. Why was it too much to fucking ask for one friend. Just one. Nothing could ever go back. Nothing ever stayed the same. That wish, that endless, helpless hope killed him over and over again.

"Cas … Cas," he said, sucking down a mouthful of air along with a throatful of blood. "Cas …"

His eye focussed and he saw the glint from the sword's edge as Castiel lifted it. _No_. No, come on, he still had work to do, still had to close the gates of Hell, protect Sammy while his brother did that, still had to see the fucking Grand Canyon, Hefner's ranch … shit, still had to figure out so much stuff, he wasn't ready to goddamn well die yet.

_He wanted to live._

"I know you can hear me," he said, swaying on his knees, held upright only by the angel's grip on his shattered right arm. "Cas … it's me …we're family …"

Were they? He wondered suddenly. Were they still the brothers in arms they'd started out as? Did angels care about people … ever? Anna had come back from a tour in Heaven conditioned to kill. What did they do to them up there?

"We need you," he said, swallowing as his blood bubbled in his airway. "Cas, please …"

"_You have to choose, Castiel," Naomi said, as the angel in front of her stared unseeing through her. The connection was thin, she could control the vessel but the mind within it, that mind was here and she still needed him, still needed him to be a soldier, even once the Winchesters were dead. "Us? Or them?"_

"Cas," Dean gasped out, the grey mists closing at the edges of his sight, each beat of his heart fluxing the pain stronger and brighter and sharper through him. He was dying. The realisation wasn't surprising, exactly. But he didn't want to.

Castiel dropped the sword and his fingers uncurled from their grip on Dean's arm. He watched as Dean crumpled, bent protectively over the limb, his fading consciousness shocked into returning with the fierce and excruciating pain that shot up his arm.

The connection between the vessel and the angel was gone, and he turned away from the man in front of him, knowing he was dying, finding little of interest in the thought. The tablet lay on the ground next to him, and he bent slowly, reaching out for it.

When he touched the stone, he felt it. It filled him with all the things he'd forgotten, all the reasons he'd once had for believing. Light speared out from the undecipherable markings, brightening and brightening as he straightened up. White light. Filling the crypt. Filling the room of reflections. Filling the angel.

The connection was restored. Instantly. Perfectly. And the constructs that had been jerry-rigged into his mind … _Naomi's failsafes_, he thought, very distantly … they were swept aside and burned up as if they'd never existed. What remained was … _Castiel_. And only him.

Dean closed his eye, a deep groan reverberating in his chest as he lifted his arm to shield them from the light.

_Naomi spun away, as the light flared in the room and vanished, the angel with it. Leaving her alone._

Cas looked down at the tablet. He remembered everything. With a cool, clear clarity that he hadn't felt since before he'd been commanded by an archangel to do God's work and raise a soul from the depths of Hell. He remembered faith and obedience. He remembered rebellion and doubt. He remembered feeling lost and alone. He remembered the warmth of the casual affection that the man in front of him had bestowed. He remembered his fear and his certainty and his yearning for a father that seemed to have abandoned them all. He remembered pride. And betrayal. And the look in Dean's eyes when he'd finally accepted that the angel had lied. Had lied to him. And he remembered dying and being resurrected, again and again. He remembered wanting to hide and the moment when he'd decided to stop running. He remembered his acts of unholy wrath and the contrition, his feeling that he could never be forgiven for what he'd done and what he'd felt. He remembered his penance.

What he couldn't do was feel it. Any of it.

"Cas …"

He looked down at Dean again.

_Dying. _

That he could prevent. He reached out and Dean flinched away from him, and he felt. The man was afraid of him. Afraid that he was going to kill him. Afraid that Castiel was a stranger.

"No … Cas. Cas!" Dean turned away, his uninjured arm lifted in a pitiful attempt to stop the next blow. Cas ignored it, laying his fingers along the side of Dean's face and neck, feeling the energy of the universe slip through him, as easily as water through the mesh of a net, from him into the man arched back in pain before him.

Every cell knew how it should be. Every single one knew where it belonged. He asked them to return to their correct state, to their correct places. And so it was.

Leaning back, Cas looked down at him. "So sorry, Dean."

Dean dragged in a breath. It came easily and painlessly, filling his lungs, his chest rising and falling effortlessly. He looked at his arm, the memory of seeing it bent and twisted and broken at every angle still there, but the arm straight and whole.

"What the hell just happened?" he asked the angel.

* * *

"I believe they're playing my song," Crowley said from behind them, as the echoes of the thunder rolled away.

Meg and Sam turned and moved together to clear ground. Crowley leaned up against the side of the building, looking around casually.

"Love what you've done with the place," the King of Hell remarked. "You really think all that –" He gestured at the painted walls. " – is going to keep me out, forever?"

"At least long enough for Dean and Cas to get the tablet and get out," Sam said, trying to ignore the weakness that seemed to fill his right side.

"Castiel," Crowley repeated disenchantedly. "So that's who's been poking my boys …and not in a sexy way."

Sam met the demon's gaze steadily, the corner of his mouth lifting very slightly.

Crowley stared back. "I've got a bone to pick with you, Moose. After what you did to my poor dog."

Meg felt a shiver run up her spine at the threat in Crowley's voice. He was attached to the hellhounds. More so than anything else, she thought. He'd certainly want to gut Sam if the youngest Winchester had killed a hound.

"Are you going to talk us to death, or get down to it already?" she said mockingly, drawing his attention.

"There's my whore," Crowley said, looking at her. "I'm not here for my dearly departed, though. I'm here for the stone with the funny scribbles on it."

"That's not going to happen," Sam said coldly.

Crowley's gaze slid back to him. "Love it when you get all manly and tough," he said derisively. "Touches me right where my bathing suit goes."

He drew the angel sword from the slim sheath at his hip and Meg turned to Sam.

"Go," she said decisively. "Save your brother and … my unicorn."

Sam turned and ran for the door as Crowley stepped closer to Meg.

"Timon and Pumbaa, tell you their big plan?" Crowley said, walking past her. "Did they share that little chestnut with you?"

Meg's hand tightened around the hilt of the sword as she turned slowly to face him. _This is it, kiddo_. No pizza deliveries, no furniture moving, just an opportunity to get some long-awaited payback from the demon who claimed the throne of Hell. He wasn't one of the Fallen. He was an ordinary demon, made from a human soul. He would die on the point of the angelic sword she held, regal powers or not.

"They mean to close the gates of Hell, sweetheart," Crowley said, raising his voice slightly for effect. "They mean to kill me. And all the demons. You included."

Meg snorted in delight. "You had me at 'kill you', Crowley."

He nodded, looking away, and the sword hissed as he turned back to her, arm swinging fast, the edges gleaming in the streetlights.

She was waiting for it, and she skittered backwards, changing direction fast when he overbalanced, too sure of the hit, her sword's edge cutting through his suit and scoring along his side. He was too fast for her to penetrate deeply and she spun away, dropping and rolling clear as he snarled in pain at the light slice.

"Bloody Savile Row suit and you've cut it to ribbons," he snapped, looking at the gaping hole.

"Will you shut up," Meg said, her voice utterly bored. "I would die happily if it meant I didn't have to listen any more of your fatuous, immature observations about the state of anything."

It wasn't hard to enrage Crowley, he had an Alaskan-sized chip on his shoulder about a lot of things, enough insecurity to make the Winchesters look well-adjusted and he was surprisingly touchy about his appearance. But he was vindictive and he was stronger, faster and more skilled than she was with the weapon he carried. It wasn't a safe game to play with him.

"Oh you'll die, darling," he told her, the black glint in his eyes telling her she'd struck gold with the remark. "It won't be happily, of course. Or quickly. Or easily. But you'll die."

He lunged for her and she stumbled over the loose footing behind her, twisting frantically aside as she fell, feeling his hand brush through her hair and catch a handful. She threw herself to one side, her scalp ripping as her hair remained his grip, blood trickling down her neck.

"I'll take you a handful at time, Meg," Crowley promised her, opening his fingers and shaking the long, blonde strands from his palm.

"Honestly, Crowley," she said, glancing behind her to make sure there was nothing that could trip her up again. "You were happy when you handled all the crossroads deals."

"I was," Crowley agreed readily. "Born to sell, really."

"Why take a shot at the title then?"

"Ambition, Meg," he told her dryly. "Something you never dreamed of, with your Lucifer fixation. The downfall of many."

He feinted to the right and she dodged left, backpedalling hard as he shifted his weight and his fist flew into her face, her nose breaking under it. Dropping at his feet, she swung one straight leg hard, and he fell as his legs were swept from under him, her angel's sword driving deep through his thigh and red-gold light pulsed around it. He rolled fast and she only just pulled the sword out before he could roll on top of it.

"You fucking little bitch," he said, getting awkwardly to his feet, sweat beaded his forehead as he shifted his weight from the injured leg.

"Ah," she said, forcing herself to speak without gasping. "Sweet nothings from the tailor from Scotland. I'll pass."

He closed faster than she could believe, one hand gripping the front of her jacket and holding her tight, the other curled around the sword's hilt and slamming into her ribs, and her jaw, in quick succession, before she could lift the blade in her hand. He thrust her backwards and she twisted away, narrowly missing the protruding pipe that he'd no doubt intended to spit her on.

"Feeling tired yet, Meg?"

"Not even close," she said, feeling the flex of her ribs as she took a breath. It wasn't bad enough to slow her down.

The sword scored across her face, leaving a shallow furrow from the corner of her mouth to her eyebrow and she stumbled away from him, trying to ride the blows he rained down on her. The kick hit her in the ribs, at the back, the same side as the previous one, and the ends of the ribs bent inwards, sending a deep, stabbing pain through her lungs as she fell to the ground.

* * *

"This … Naomi … has been controlling you since she got you out of Purgatory?" Dean asked Castiel. It explained a lot of what had gone since the angel had come out of Purgatory, but at the same time it was setting off every alarm he had about what was happening in Heaven.

"Yes," Cas said, looking down at the tablet.

"What broke the connection?" Dean asked, uneasy with the confusion on Cas' face.

"I don't know," he said. "This … perhaps. There was a wall … in my mind."

He looked at Dean. "I couldn't break through it. When I picked this up, it vanished. Just disappeared. And I came back to here, back to myself."

"What'd she do to you?"

"She built things, I think. Planted false memories and false ideas," Cas said slowly. "I'm not sure how … but when I disobeyed, there was a split, and she could take over."

Dean looked down at the tablet in the angel's hands. With angels like that around, were they any safer than with the demons? Had God provided instructions for humanity to close Heaven as well? In case of general craziness?

Cas saw the direction of his gaze and his fingers tightened on the stone. "I just know that I have to protect this tablet now."

"From Naomi," Dean said warily. He didn't know the angel who was standing in front of him, he realised. Didn't know what he could trust and what he couldn't. Didn't know if this Castiel cared at all about him.

"Yes." Castiel hesitated and looked back at him. "And from you."

"From me? What are you talking about –" Dean stopped as the angel disappeared, the flutter of his wings loud in the small, enclosed space.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, looking around the room. What the hell had Cas meant? That they were a danger to Heaven? Or that they would want to use the tablet to shut Heaven off from this plane, as they would do with Hell?

"Cas?" He took a step forward. The angel was gone and he knew it. "Cas, godammit!"

"Dean?" Sam burst through the doorway, looking around. "Dean, where's Cas?"

"He's gone," Dean said shortly. "Meg?"

Sam shook his head. "We gotta go … now."

Dean followed Sam up the curving, narrow stairs, stopping as Sam hesitated beside the side door. It was a few feet to the car but both of them looked at the fight thirty yards away, in front of the main door. Even in the washed-out, greyish light of the streetlamps, they could see that Meg was staggering, covered in blood.

"We should help her," Sam said very softly.

Dean shook his head. "With what? You want to take on Crowley, give him a chance to take one or both of us hostage and force Cas into handing over the tablet?"

"But –"

Dean watched Meg go down, roll over fast and struggle to her knees again, her eyes fixed on Crowley. She was buying them time, he knew. Time to get out. To get away. If they wasted her efforts …

"Go," he told his brother. "Now."

Crowley walked to her, reaching down and grasping a handful of her jacket and shirt and hauling to her feet in front of him.

"I could beat on you for eternity," he said in a low voice to her.

"Take all the time you – want – you – pig," she said, swallowing the blood that kept running down the back of her throat.

The squeak of the Impala's doors caught her attention and she looked past him to the car, forcing a smile as she saw his expression.

"No Cas in the back seat." Her voice bubbled slightly. "Your stone is long gone."

He was still looking over his shoulder at the car. She didn't know where she found the strength to lift the sword, lift it and drive it into his arm, but she did, and he screamed as the wound lit up their faces in red and gold. Her eyes cut to the car, and she saw their faces, both of them looking back at her as she pulled the sword from Crowley's arm. His sword drove into her chest and the heat and fire and pain and blood burned up inside of her, the twisted and blackened remains of her soul. Peace, she thought as she disappeared.

Crowley dragged the sword out of her meatsuit and let her fall, and the Impala's tyres poured smoke as Dean stepped on the gas. The car shot out of the building's yard, squealing as it made the first corner.

He watched it go, and turned back to the building. Lucifer's crypts, he thought. The fallen angel still had the power to send an icy shard of fear through him, even as he tried to mock the melodramatic grandeur that Lucifer had surrounded himself with. Angels were too powerful. That's all it was, he told himself.

Sam had missed a window and he was inside, skirting the traps that Dean or possibly Castiel had made, on their way in. In a rush, and that's what you get. He inched his way around a trap that almost, but not quite, filled a doorway to the basement.

The hole in the wall and the staircase were a surprise. He wondered vaguely what had hidden them back in the days before people had been here. The crypt was not empty. There were things of interest in it. But the stone was gone. And it would be in Heaven by now, he realised, safe beyond his ability to retrieve it.

He looked up as he sensed a displacement of air.

"Naomi." He walked slowly around the room toward her. "Fancy meeting you here. Haven't seen you in a … dark …age."

She looked at him impatiently, standing beyond the threshold.

"Love the haircut." Crowley stopped by the altar and smiled at her.

She smiled back reluctantly. "How's the shoulder?"

"Just a flesh wound," Crowley said, glancing down at it. He still couldn't believe he'd let the little whore get the drop on him and force him into killing her with a single blow. She'd been clever, Meg had. He could admit to that. He looked at the angel.

"Now, I don't have the tablet, and if you're here … neither do you," Crowley said conversationally. "Which means that your Castiel is in the wind with our prize. If I didn't know you better, I'd say you're losing your touch."

Naomi smiled condescendingly at him. "Castiel isn't 'in the wind', Crowley. He's doing exactly what he's supposed to do. Protect the tablet."

"Even from you?" Crowley guessed, his mouth curving up as he saw the smugness fade from her face. "Easy, love. If you remember our time in Spain the way I do, you know … I'm a lover, not a fighter."

"What do you want, you cockroach?" she snapped at him impatiently. The assignation in Madrid had started out as business. She didn't care to remember the rest.

His low laughter echoed quietly around the room. "Ah, pressed the right button there, didn't I? Maybe … we can make a deal." He turned away from her. "Before this gets truly bollocksed."

He stopped. "I mean, I must have something that you want?" He looked at the doorway. It was empty. "Tart stole my move."

* * *

_**I-80 W Missouri**_

Sam thought over everything that Dean had told him. "So, what happened? Cas touched the tablet and it reset him to his factory settings or something?"

"He thought so," Dean said tersely. "I don't know. And I don't care. All I know is that he is off the reservation with a heavenly WMD."

In his brother's voice, there was an edge that hadn't been there since Dean had gotten out of Purgatory. An edge that he knew was the pressure cooker on in Dean again.

"Listen, man, I can't take any more lies," Dean said, his fingers curling tighter around the wheel as he glanced at Sam. "From anyone."

Sam met his look and understood what he was saying. He should've told him, he thought. Not let it get this far, this bad.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "I'm sorry. I should've told you."

Dean straightened a little and Sam realised that it'd been a while since he'd apologised to Dean. Apologised for doing something he'd known would worry his brother, known would probably make him crazy.

"I just wanted to believe I was okay … I don't know," he said distractedly. He'd wanted to believe that it wasn't happening to him, and that feeling was familiar. Was he still running from himself?

"Well, you heard what Cas said," Dean said, fear thrumming under the words, lacing his voice. "That first trial hurt you in ways that he can't heal." Dean looked back at the road. "Sammy, I need you to be honest with me from here on out, man."

"You're right," Sam agreed readily. "And I will be."

For a second, he sensed a loosening in his brother. The skin over his knuckles returned to pink, not the white they'd been a moment ago.

"Listen," Dean said quietly. "So long as we've got each other's backs, we can get through anything, Sam. Always have been able to … and we always will be able to."

"Yeah, I know." Sam looked out the window. "But it goes both ways, Dean. It has to."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that I'll be honest with you. I won't lie. I won't pretend that things aren't happening when they are. But you have to do the same thing," he said slowly. "If you're dying inside because of something, you have to tell me. Even if there's nothing anyone can do about it. Because if you don't, it eats at you and I don't know what the hell is happening."

Dean was silent for a while and Sam wondered if he was going to accept that condition, or if they'd fall back into the old habits, as they'd done a hundred times before.

"That's … fair," Dean said finally, nodding. "I can probably do that."

"Okay."

"Okay then."

He reached out and turned on the radio, not wanting to start that little arrangement this minute.

He could try, he guessed. It took him a long time to get the crap in his head organised enough to tell anyone about it. Took him a long time to understand what had been broken and why. The anger was dissipating. It would come back, he knew, when he thought about Cas again. Or Benny. Or any of the others he'd tried to lean on and had had to let go.

He could trust Sam to a certain extent. Perhaps enough, perhaps not. He couldn't predict that. He didn't think that he would find anyone else. Not to trust. Not to lean on. Not to … believe in, he thought, brows drawing together slightly as he looked for the definition of what it was he did want. He didn't know. He was alive. Sam was alive. Kevin was working his ass off, hopefully. They had a job and … and Cas had disappeared, with a tablet of God, and there was no telling what the sonofabitch was going to do.

_He healed you._

Yeah, he had. Beaten him practically to the point of death then made it all right again. But it wasn't right. For him it was a long, long way from being right. He thought that Cas had a made a choice. Not Heaven and not him, not humanity. Cas was walking his own road now. And there was no room for friends on that road.

He wanted to go back and that was never going to happen. All his best times were back. He shrugged inwardly at the thought. All his worst times were back as well. That was the nature of it, everything was back. At least Meg was free of it all now. No Heaven but no Hell either. Just nothingness? He didn't know. He hoped that whatever had happened to her, it was at least missing the misery that seemed to dog them all.

* * *

The bus was almost empty, most of the seats unoccupied. Castiel looked down at the tablet in his hands, his fingers caressing the engraved symbols. It had saved him, he thought absently. He would save it.

No one would find him. He knew how to be invisible and untraceable. He'd spent almost two thousand years on this little planet, watching humanity, invisible and utterly without a connection of any sort. He could do it again. He would do it again to keep the tablet safe.

Feeling had returned to him. In thin trickling threads and barely noticeable impulses. It would get stronger, he thought, if he remained with people. He knew how to interact with them now. The temptations to talk, to listen, to hear … they would great. And then there was always the chance he would want to talk to one person. And he couldn't let that happen.

He'd left Dean with the impression that he'd chosen the tablet over his friendship and the fate of humanity. He'd seen the fresh betrayal in the man's eyes when he'd left. It was poor repayment for the loyalty and the things he'd learned from him. He wasn't sure how much damage he'd done with that decision. Perhaps, some day, he would be able to find out, make amends. Probably not, he told himself prosaically. Dean was stronger than he believed, stronger than he imagined. He would have to learn that for himself. No one could tell him.

The road stretched out ahead of the bus and disappeared behind them and they followed it around the curving hills, a train line below, and beyond that, a river, sparkling in the cold fall sunshine, following the same line through the mountains.

He would hide and watch. He would keep the tablet out of everyone's reach. He would give the Winchesters the time to close the gates of Hell. And he would remember.


	36. Chapter 36 Under Age

**Chapter 36 Under Age**

* * *

_**Kabetogama State Forest, Minnesota, 1988**_

The growl, something between the low chest growl of a wolf and the high-pitched scream of a mountain lion, echoed off the ravine wall and brought Victor out of sleep as completely as a dowsing with a bucket of ice-cold water.

_What the fuck was that_, he thought, glancing at the still hump of his wife in the near-darkness of the tent. He heard the crack of a branch, somewhere close, in the woods on the southern side of the camp site. His heart was pounding, his palms damp, he realised suddenly. And this is what primordial man felt, in the darkness of night, hearing the cave lion hunting, he tried to ridicule himself out of his fear, forcing his hands to curl around the metal tab of the zipper to the sleeping bag, dragging it down.

The camp fire was low, glowing embers in their bed of ash as he unzipped the flap of the tent and crawled outside. Despite being mid-June, the night air was cold and he shivered a little in the thin t-shirt and shorts he'd worn to bed. Might as well stir it up, he thought, looking at it. There wasn't much around here that would really threaten them but he glanced at the rifle he'd brought along, lying in its case next to the door of the tent and thought he might as well load it at least, keep it to hand in the nights.

Thunder rumbled, somewhere to the east, and he looked in that direction, seeing the woods and the ridge outlined by the flicker of sheet lightning. Maybe that's what he'd heard, he thought uncertainly, watching the lightning flash again. Just a storm coming.

Crouching beside the fire, he took a long stick and stirred the ashes, adding a handful of tinder to the red coals and waiting impatiently for them to catch. They'd been camping here since Clare had been a toddler, every summer and they'd never had problems, had always enjoyed the early summer get-away, spending a couple of weeks here before heading down to see Anna's parents and spend a little time with them on the Outer Banks.

The twigs were catching when he heard another crack, in the woods, behind him this time. Closer. Louder. Piling a dozen sticks on top of the small flames, Victor turned on his heel, staring into the blackness surrounding the small clearing. Another roll of thunder and his eyes narrowed as the lightning lit the clearing and he saw the tent he shared with Anna shiver suddenly. Had that been a breeze? A couple of yards from that tent was the one his two daughters and son were sleeping in.

The growl seemed to come from every point of the compass, and Victor swallowed, his hand curling around the stick he held, the rifle forgotten. The children's tent collapsed and he sprang forward, toward it, his own scream ripping out of his throat as he looked up and saw what stood on the other side of the shredded terylene heap. An impossibly long arm swept at him, he felt himself lifted and thrown across the clearing, his wind gone when he hit the trunk of the tree, blackness shrinking his vision as something sticky ran down his neck.

"No," he croaked. The … thing … the creature … the monster … lifted Ariane, and he watched it swing her high in the air, her high-pitched six-year-old's voice shrieking in terror, the scream cut short as she fell to the ground twenty yards away.

"Daddy! Mommy!" Connor's voice had started to break that year, but it was high now, the words dissolving into a drawn-out scream as the long claws punched through his chest and abdomen and the monster reached out for Clare.

_No, no, no, no!_ Victor screamed with them inside of his head, rolling over, his head throbbing sickeningly as he tried to drag himself closer.

Above, the thunder rumbled, drowning out the sound of the rifle as Anna worked the bolt and fired again, the monster turning and suddenly next to her, impossibly. Lightning struck the ridge, the crack deafening and Victor's eyes widened as he saw his wife fall limply, dragged off, the rifle lying in the dirt, her eyes open and staring in the blue-white light of another strike.

He pushed himself to his knees, the world swaying around him and looked up as a hiss and crackle sounded above him, the ridge no longer dark, outlined now in golden flame.

Wildfire, he thought incoherently. Fire. The thought was remote. His family were in danger, terrible danger and he had to move, had to save them. He felt his leg give way as he tried to put weight on it, pitching him face-down into the soft ground again. Pain crawled through him and thunder shook the earth, a lightning strike strobing the clearing vividly in front of him, white light and golden light suddenly filling his world.

The small river at the side of the camp site held a few deeper pools, here and there amongst the smooth boulders. The fire was racing down the hill toward him, the flames greedily devouring the dry timber and leaves. He would burn up if he stayed here.

He couldn't walk. He could hardly lift his head. He couldn't save his family. For a long moment, he lay on his side, tasting the smoke and ash of the approaching inferno, unable to think of a reason to move. Then he did move, rolling onto his chest, and reaching out to drag himself closer to the river. Starbursts of pain and an oily, roiling nausea filled him, but he reached out again, dragging himself another couple of feet closer to the water.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas, Present Day**_

Dean leaned against the kitchen counter, looking at the bubbling pot on the stove beside him, the room filled with the rich smells of the gumbo.

Once, if he'd felt like the dish, he'd've gotten in the car and driven south, spent a few days down there, pigging out on the food, on the women and the booze and the music, looking around for the jobs that were more often than not to be found. Once he would've thought that was normal and fine, in fact better than fine, a hell of a life … he'd been young and strong and hadn't given a damn about anything except the black car and his weapons and the freedom of the road.

In reality, that time had only lasted a year or so, when he'd done his own jobs most of the time, his father hunting elsewhere, checking in but not around. In his memory, it'd felt like a long, long golden-age. Not entirely golden, of course. He'd still worried about his father. Still worried about his brother, on the west coast and as distant as if he'd been on the moon. But most of the time it'd been his life, and no one else's.

He looked up as Sam came in, eyes closing and nostrils flaring appreciatively.

"What are you making?"

"Gumbo," Dean said, giving the pot a stir and walking across the room to the fridge.

"You know how to make gumbo?" Sam slid onto the seat at the island bench and looked at him curiously.

"I don't need a damned college degree to make a meal, Sam," Dean snapped irritably, passing him a bottle of cold beer and taking his own back to the counter. "It's not that freaking hard."

Sam blinked at the tone. "No, sure. Okay."

Dean dragged in a breath and let it out, tipping his bottle up and swallowing a soothing mouthful as he tried to shut away the thoughts that had been aggravating him. He looked at his brother.

"Anything on the renegade angel?"

_Renegade angel_, Sam thought, lifting his beer. It was an improvement on the varyingly caustic derogatory terms Dean had been using for Cas over the past two weeks.

"No," he said, putting the bottle down on the bench. "Nothing."

"Anything on demons, Crowley?"

"Nope, that's quiet as well," Sam said, watching him turn off the gas burner and pull a couple of deep bowls from the cupboard.

"Anything even remotely suggestive of what we do?" Dean asked, ladling out the richly aromatic meal into the bowls.

Sam shook his head. "A few things going on in Bavaria, a haunting in Sweden. Oh, and there're some kind of weird animal attacks in Brisbane, Australia, but nothing came up here."

Dean set the bowl next to his brother and plunked the other one on the other side of the bench.

"How're your lungs going?"

Sam hesitated with the spoon halfway to his mouth. "Same as they've been for the last few weeks."

Dean nodded.

* * *

A couple of hours later, Dean sat in the armchair in the library, watching the flames dancing over the logs in the fireplace moodily. He'd had the best of intentions when he'd agreed to Sam's insistence that the truth-telling be equal. He really had. But the fact was, that when it came down to it, the words got stuck somewhere in his throat and he couldn't get them out. Not to his brother. Not to anyone.

He was pissed at the angel. He was pissed at Crowley. There were no words to describe his feelings about Heaven. He was worried like hell about the second trial, the weeks passing and Sam getting weaker and still no word from Kevin.

Looking at the whiskey in the glass he held, the firelight lighting it to a shade of gold, he realised he wasn't using it to drown out the thoughts and memories the way he had before he'd gone to Purgatory. That had to be a positive sign. Of something. But, he admitted to himself reluctantly, sometimes he drank it because it was the only thing that could warm him up, could stop him from freezing from the inside out.

He thought of the man he'd been once, barely a man, more of a cocky kid with way too much belief in his own invincibility. That man had disappeared in chunks in '05, vanishing entirely the night they'd burned John Winchester on a pyre.

He didn't even know how that man had ever existed. But he had. And he wasn't enough of a hypocrite to be able to lie to himself about how much he'd loved hunting, back when he'd had his father, and Jim and Caleb, backing him up, giving him a safe place to rest, to recover from whatever injuries he'd managed to get. Even after Sam had left, there'd been plenty of good times, plenty of good memories. He missed them all, and nothing had been the same after they'd gone.

Sam walked up from the war room, and dropped into the chair on the opposite side of the hearth.

"Think I found something," he said. "Local, too."

"Lebanon?"

"Not quite that local. Conway Springs," Sam corrected him. "You want to check it out?"

"Tell me about it," Dean said, rolling his eyes slightly.

"Female vics, throats torn out, blood drained," Sam summarised.

"Vamps?" Dean smiled a little. "Yeah, why not? My swing's been getting rusty."

* * *

_**Conway Springs, Kansas**_

The radio was playing softly enough that Krissy could still hear the faint roar of the falls, a few hundred yards upriver from the lookout.

The boy kissing her was good, she thought remotely. Not too wet, not cleaning her tonsils, not banging into her teeth with his own. It wasn't an unpleasant way to spend the time. And from time to time, she felt a flash of heat, some deeper longing that she shied from each time it happened, not wanting to lose herself, not tonight.

The shadow that flickered along the car caught her attention immediately.

"What was that?" she asked softly, turning her head to look around the car. Aidan looked around, smiling slightly.

"What?"

Krissy ignored him, twisting in the seat to look through the steamy translucence of the rear windows.

"There's no one here but us, Krissy," Aidan said, cupping his hands around her face again.

For a moment, she felt stupid, the whole damned pretence was stupid and she wanted to slap him. _Take it easy, make it look believable_, she told herself firmly. They'd tried the decoy tactic before, with Josephine and Aidan just sitting in the car, watching. The vamp had never shown. _Just act your part and he'll come for you_, she reminded herself.

Aidan's eyes were only half-closed and he saw the shadow race past the passenger side of the car.

"What?!" He let go of Krissy and looked around, rubbing his sleeve across the condensation that covered the windshield. The hood flew up with a bang and both of them flinched backwards.

Aidan looked down at the key, twisting it hard, the starter motor struggling to turn over. _Distributor cap_, he thought furiously.

Footsteps, hard soles, Krissy thought as they ran past the car. Aidan turned in his seat, reaching into the back to pull out a tyre lever. Looking down at it, her eyes widened.

"No," she said to him. "No, Aidan."

He opened the driver's door and got out, shutting it behind him.

"No! Don't leave me here!"

For a moment the only sound she could hear was her own breath, loud and rasping in her throat. Then the window smashed in behind her, fingers like steel talons gripping her arms and she struggled, not acting anymore, feeling herself lifted out through the broken window, a second's glimpse of red eyes and pointed fangs above her.

The machete swung smoothly, and the head disappeared, bouncing across the asphalt as the body dropped, Krissy falling out of the car on top of it. She rolled to her knees, looking up into Aidan's face as Josephine ran from the shadows on the other side of the parking area.

"You okay?" Josephine asked her, staring down at the head of the vampire.

Krissy looked at her coolly. "That was close," she said acerbically. "Next time, someone else can play bait."

The tall black girl shrugged slightly, looking over at Aidan. He still stood beside the body, staring down at the head. Krissy walked up beside him, glancing at the tension in his face, tactfully ignoring the tear that glistened in the overhead light as it crawled down his cheek.

"That's him," Aidan said, his voice shaking.

"One down," Krissy said. "Two to go."

* * *

_**I-35 S, Kansas**_

Dean's fingers drummed on the wheel impatiently as he listened to his brother.

"No, all I'm saying is that what happened with us, with our family, doesn't happen to everyone."

"It happened to our grandparents," Dean countered tightly. "All killed."

"Because of Yellow Eyes," Sam pointed out. "Because he was looking for a certain kind of person. He picked plenty of people who weren't hunters."

Sam watched his brother's face harden and sighed inwardly. Despite the fact that he'd enjoyed his year of normality, he was coming to the conclusion that doing what they did no longer precluded having some kind of life. Seeing Prometheus, seeing him with Haley and Oliver, it had turned his thinking around. Made him wonder.

"What about Ellen and Jo?" Dean flicked a glance at him. "Bill died – hunting. Fighting demons."

"If he'd been a cop, he might've died," Sam suggested reasonably. "Or a fireman. Or a soldier. You saying that all the people in those professions are cursed too? That they can't have normal lives, families?"

"Their odds are better than ours."

"Not that much," Sam said, shrugging.

"Why are you defending this life, Sam?" Dean finally asked in exasperation. "You hated it since you were three!"

"And you used to love it."

"It's taken everything from us," Dean snapped. "Everyone we ever cared about is dead because of us!"

"Not because of us, Dean," Sam said tiredly. "Because they were in the life and they ran out of luck."

Dean scowled at the road. "If they hadn't been in our life, they would still be alive."

"But it was their choice." Sam looked at him. "Don't you think people have the right to decide what to fight for? What to live or die for?"

"No," Dean growled quellingly. "Where are we going?"

"Police station," Sam answered, giving up. "Second on the right when we come into town."

* * *

_**Conway Springs, Kansas**_

Dean pulled into the parking lot and found a clear slot near the entrance. He nosed into it, turning off the engine and pulling on the brake. He stayed in the car, glancing at Sam who was looking at him questioningly.

"Sam, you want to hang back on this one, you know, that's fine," he said, shifting his gaze to the building.

"What?"

"You know, the trials, what Cas said … that what you have, he can't cure," Dean said, gesturing vaguely.

"Which means what, exactly?" Sam asked.

"I don't know, you tell me. Are you okay?" Dean turned to look at him.

"I'm fine," Sam said carefully. "Why? Are you okay?"

"Me?" Dean's brows rose slightly.

"Yeah, Cas dinged you up pretty good."

"And?"

"And I just want to make sure you're okay," Sam told him. "You know, because we did say we'd be honest."

Dean shook his head. "What, like my feelings?"

"If that's what you want to talk about, sure," Sam agreed.

There was a moment's silence as Dean realised he'd been neatly trapped. Again. "Okay," he said slowly. "Well, I'll tell you what … why don't I go and get some herbal tea –"

"Okay," Sam said, opening the door beside him.

"– and you can find some 'Cowboy Junkies' on the dial, and –"

"Eat me, Dean," Sam threw over his shoulder as he got out.

"– and you know what? We'll just talk it out," Dean said, raising his voice as Sam slammed the door behind him. "Good talk."

He got out of the car and walked across the parking lot after his brother. "Great talk! Very healthy."

* * *

"FBI? You boys were quick," the sheriff said, looking at their badges. "What did you say your jurisdiction was here again?"

"Just checking to see if the two female victims you've got have anything in common with several murders in Ohio," Dean said.

"Huh." The sheriff turned and walked into the bullpen, going to the end, Dean and Sam following him. "Well, you saw the reports, right? Under twenty-one, both female, extensive tissue damage to their throats –"

"Both drained of blood," Sam finished for him as he walked around the end of the last desk in the room.

"Yeah," the sheriff nodded. "We found that strange also. But last night, things got even stranger."

"Last night?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," the sheriff gestured to the monitor in front of him, turning it toward them. "We set up a security camera at Fullers Point – for safety purposes – it's where our local young people like to go make out." He hit a key on the keyboard and the security footage loaded. "Last night … things got crazy."

Sam and Dean looked at the monitor. The picture showed a car, a nondescript-looking hatchback sitting by the raised kerb at the edge of the parking lot. A minute went by and nothing changed. Dean glanced at the sheriff.

"Oh, hell, sorry," the sheriff said, cueing up the correct time. "There we go."

The blur on the camera was impossible to make out and both men's attention sharpened. They watched a young man get out of the car, heading out of the camera's field of vision. A minute later, a man walked up to the passenger side of the car rapidly, elbowing the window and reaching in to pull a girl from the passenger seat. From behind him, the young man who'd been in the car ran into view, swinging smoothly, sending the attacker's head from his shoulders.

"Helluva thing, ain't it?" the sheriff said, shaking his head.

"Uh … you ID any of these people?" Sam asked. On the screen, there were three young people, all looking down at the body. The taller girl at the end of the loose line held a police-issue pump action shotgun. Dean frowned at the screen.

"Well, not yet," the sheriff hedged. "Crime scene was empty when we got there – no vic, no nuthin'." He hit a couple of keys and froze the picture, catching the middle girl with her face turned up to the camera. "I'm thinking it's some kind of cult, or drug thing. So I put out a statewide APB on these three about an hour ago."

Dean stared at the image. He knew that face. Knew the girl.

"Gonna need you to call that off," he said to the sheriff. "And we're gonna need this footage."

"What?" The sheriff looked at him doubtfully.

"Sheriff, this investigation is under federal jurisdiction as of now," Dean said, looking at him. "These match the Ohio cases, we're talking killers crossing state lines, and that's our baby. I suggest that you co-operate, and call off your APB … or you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt."

Sam forced his features into a bland mask of agreement as the sheriff's gaze shifted to him.

"Right." The sheriff turned away to copy the camera footage.

* * *

"So what was all that about, G-man?" Sam followed Dean out of the building. "You find it that easy to forget that all we've got at the other end of the numbers on our business cards is Garth?"

Dean shook his head. "You remember Krissy Chambers?"

Sam slowed, waiting for the name to register. "Yeah … the vetala case, they were working that truck stop by the freeway."

"Right, and he promised to go civilian so she wouldn't grow up to be a hunter," Dean continued. "Well, guess who the star of this snuff film is."

"Come on," Sam said, looking at him as they crossed the parking lot. "Well, maybe he doesn't know she's doing this?"

Dean stopped by the car. "What? Sneaking out in the middle of the night to go hunting monsters with her BFFs? That's what kids are doing for kicks these days?"

"Okay, maybe he knows and he's helping her out."

"And he lets her get caught on candid camera?" Dean looked at him. "Let's just go find her before she gets into any more trouble."

Sam looked at him. "We're in luck, only two accommodation places in town."

"Split up?"

Sam nodded. "One hotel, centre of town, one motel, other end. What do you want?"

"I'll take the hotel," Dean said sourly. "Drop me off and meet me back there when you've checked the others."

They switched places and Sam stopped in front of the ugly, square hotel to let Dean out, pulling back into the traffic as soon as the door had shut.

* * *

Dean walked into the lobby, sizing up the clerk behind the desk in a glance, and pulling out his wallet. He had a clear printout of Krissy's face, taken from the footage and an impatience to find her and get her out of whatever she was into.

"Hey," he said, leaning on the counter as the man raised an eyebrow at him. "Looking for three kids." He pulled out the printout and set it flat on the counter. "Might have been only one of them checking in. My niece and her friends, we're all real worried about them."

"Your niece? _Riiiggght_ … mister, our guests are entitled to their privacy –" the clerk started to say and Dean sighed, pulling out two fifties and sliding them across the counter next to the printout.

"I believe that your … niece … and her friends have taken Room 307, sir," the clerk said unsmilingly, making the money disappear.

"Thank you," Dean said, glancing at the stairs. He turned around and walked back out, dialling Sam.

* * *

Sam parked the car under the overhanging shop awning and walked up to the hotel's entrance, as per his brother's instructions. Krissy had been fourteen when they'd met her. She'd be sixteen now, he thought uneasily, not much more than a kid really.

"Straight up?" he asked Dean as he walked up to him in the lobby.

"No." Dean shook his head. "She's young and dumb, but not that dumb. You go in the front, make some noise. I'll take the back way, in case she's not that happy to see us."

Sam's brow creased up. "What are you thinking?"

Dean looked at him and shrugged. "She and this little gang of hers are smart enough to take down a vamp but not smart enough to check out their stakeout area for cameras," he pointed out. "That's just young, but there's no point giving her an easy way to push us out if she doesn't want to listen to reason. She's in 307. Don't be so quiet you give her a scare."

Sighing, Sam turned for the stairs as Dean walked out through the rear.

* * *

At the side of the building on the other street, the firestairs climbed the brickwork and Dean used the dumpster under it to get to the lowest platform. He looked up, climbing the stairs to the third floor and counted the windows. Two were lit. Edging along the narrow gantry, he slid his knife along the crack between the upper and lower window frames and felt the lock turn. The edges of the lower frame had been thoroughly painted to the surrounding frame and he ran the knife along the joins, breaking the seal and lifting the window silently, slipping through as soon as it was wide enough. The room was a suite, he noticed. He froze as he saw a shadow in the short, narrow hall between the room he'd come into and the brightly lit living room.

Sam heard the lock click and turned the knob, pushing the door open and walking in. On the table in the middle of the room, a laptop sat open, grainy black and white video playing. He stopped and turned when he heard the gun cock.

"Hi Krissy," he said to the girl who stood at the hallway to the other rooms. "Sam Winchester."

The girl stared at him, her shoulders slumping as she lowered the gun. "What are you doing here?"

She didn't hear anything from behind her as Dean ghosted out of the darkness of the bedroom, his hand catching her wrist and pulling the gun from her, breaking open the revolver, the bullets dropping to the floor.

"You're still a little young to be playing with guns," he said quietly against her hair, handing her back the gun as she spun around to face him.

"How'd you find me?" she asked incredulously, her gaze dropping from his face to the bullets lying at her feet. "I paid cash – everywhere!"

"Uh huh," Dean said, nodding as he walked around her to his brother. "And you leave your face on a police security camera when you're working." He shrugged. "Two hotels in a twenty mile radius and we pay cash too."

"Krissy, where's your dad?" Sam asked.

She crouched on the floor, picking up the bullets and shoving them into her pocket, not answering for a moment. When she stood, her face was shuttered and hard.

"Dead."

"When?" Sam asked.

"How?" Dean added.

"I don't have time for this," she said, turning away from them and walking to the table. "We're in the middle of something."

"In the middle of something?" Dean repeated, with a bemused glance at Sam. He walked to the table, stopping behind her. "In the middle of what?"

"Vampire," she said shortly, leaning on the table as she watched the screen.

"You're hunting a vampire?" Sam walked around the other side of the table.

Krissy tapped the volume key as the footage showed a door opening into a large single room, a woman bound to the bed opposite the doorway, gagged.

"_We're in_," a girl's voice said from the speaker. "_Room's clear. Nobody here but the vic_."

The cameras were at the eye-level of the two kids carrying them, Sam noted distantly. Head-mounted. They watched the tall girl from the police security footage walk to the edge of the bed. Behind them, the door burst inward, both cameras swinging around, the flare blocking their view for a moment then resolving into a figure standing in the doorway, shadowed by the hall lights. It vanished from the screen at the same time as the dark girl went flying into a wall, the boy's camera picking up her scream.

"What room!?" Dean yelled at Krissy who was staring at the screen, her knuckles white against the edge of the table. "Room, goddammit!"

"215."

He shot out of the suite, boots pounding as he ran for the stairs, hearing his brother behind him. Taking the stairs in landing leaps, he used the heavy, old-fashioned newel posts to slingshot around to the next landing and raced down the hall of the first floor, accelerating as the first two door numbers flashed by and gave him the right direction.

The vampire's back was to them as a kick smashed the lock and sent the door crashing back against the wall, and Dean lifted his gun as he came in, seeing it turn toward him, lips drawn back from a mouthful of fangs, eyes lined in red. It was still in line with the other kid, the boy, and Dean's finger stayed tight on the trigger without pulling back as he got closer.

The vampire broke and jumped through the window, the glass and frame exploding outwards as it took them with it and the curtains fluttered in the night air. Dean was beside the window and looking down, seeing the creature racing along the road, a dark-coloured van sitting under the streetlight a half-block up, taillights glowing red. Not black, the thought flashed irrelevantly through his mind. Blue maybe.

"I got him," Krissy said from the doorway, spinning around and running down the hall.

The words penetrated and Dean snapped back from the window. "Sonofabitch!"

He shot across the room after her and Sam looked at the stunned face of the boy in front of him. "We need to call an ambulance."

The kid nodded, pulling out his phone and dialling. Sam crossed the room and dragged the other girl up from the debris of the nightstand, lamp and wall plaster covering her.

"You alright?" he asked her.

She nodded, shaking her head a little and looking at the woman on the bed.

"Ambulance on its way," the boy said, walking to the bed as Sam pulled the gag out of the woman's mouth.

"It's okay, you're gonna be okay, help's coming," he said and turned to the other two. "Come on, out of here, now."

* * *

Dean hit the pavement fifty yards behind Krissy, seeing her stop and aim, no gun retort but a hiss of air and the vampire hit the ground, skidding along the concrete walk on the other side of the road. The van had gone, he noticed as he slowed down to come up behind her.

The vampire was moaning. "Please … I'm so hungry, what's happening to me?"

"How'd you drop him so quickly?" Dean looked from the vampire to the gun in her hand, seeing the elongated barrel, nodding as his question was answered at the same as Krissy told him.

"Darts. Filled with dead man's blood."

"Did you get a look at the van?" Dean looked up the street, brows drawing together as he recognised the white pickup that had been parked in front of it.

"What van?"

"There was a dark van here, blue I think," Dean said, gesturing to the vampire and the place where the van had been parked. "That's where this thing was headed." He looked at her, seeing her lack of comprehension and realised it must've been gone even before she'd hit the street. "Never mind."

He undid the narrow strap holding the long knife he carried at the back of his hip and pulled it out.

"Wait, stop," Krissy said, looking down at the knife and back up to him. "This is not your kill."

Dean frowned at her. "What are you talking about?"

He and Krissy turned as they heard the footsteps clocking over the asphalt and coming toward them. The tall dark girl was leading, long legs striding across the street, her face hard and tight as she stopped next to the vampire on the ground.

"Sixth months ago," she said to the vampire, her voice vibrating with the tension, the words coming out through clenched teeth. "You came into a house and killed three people in their sleep."

The vampire stared up at her, his face slack with shock and the paralysing effects of the dead man's blood coursing through him.

"No, no," he slurred at her. "I didn't kill … haven't killed … anyone."

"One was a woman," the girl said, leaning closer to him. "Never hurt anyone!"

Sam looked at Dean and back to the girl as her breathing got louder, rasping in and out of her throat.

"There was a boy and … a girl," she said and her chest hitched helplessly, the machete in her hand shedding spears of light as it trembled in her hand. "A brother. And a sister."

"Nooooo," the vampire moaned, the red gone from his eyes as they rolled up. "I don't know … what you're talking about."

"I came home, from a friend's place, and I found them," the girl continued relentlessly, the blade steadying, her breathing getting deeper. "They were my family."

The vampire grimaced, doubling as the hunger inside clawed and tore at him. "I don't know – I didn't do anything – I didn't do it, didn't do it, didn't do –"

It looked up her and red filled its eyes, the fangs descending as a groan ripped out of its throat. "I'm –"

The girl's face tightened. Dean watched her lips pull back from her teeth as she lifted the machete suddenly, the blade flashing in the white light and whistling as it descended, the sound drowned out by the girl's low scream when it met the neck of the vampire.

_Execution_, Dean thought, staring at the girl. _Like the other one_. He glanced at Sam, watching his brother's face twitch in revulsion at the sight. The vamp had not been old. He was pretty sure of that. The hunger, the disorientation, those were signs of a newly-made monster. But the girl had said that her family was killed six months ago. _What the fuck was going on here?_

Krissy walked slowly to the vampire, pulling out the two darts she'd fired at him. She tucked them into her pocket as she straightened up by the other girl's side, resting a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, it's over now."

Sam looked at the lit windows around them nervously. "Let's get this wrapped up and get out of here."

Dean looked at Krissy. "Can I have a word with you? Privately."

She looked at him and nodded, walking past Aidan. "Krissy, you know this guy?"

Glancing back over her shoulder at Aidan, she nodded. "Yeah, we have a history."

Dean suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, looking at Sam. "You get this squared away?"

Sam nodded. "I'll get the car."

Krissy stopped beyond a car further up the street, leaning back against it as she waited for Dean.

"Alright, you're going to have to catch me up a bit," he said, looking back at the two kids still staring down at the dead vampire, his gaze returning to the kid in front of him. "What? Your dad couldn't quit the life?"

She shook her head. "He did. And for awhile …" Krissy looked up at him, her face softening. "It was amazing. We had … dinner, every night, at a table. We watched TV, went for walks." She snorted softly, looking away. "I even went to the mall."

"And then?"

"And then …" she hesitated, her eyes fluttering shut against the memory that was still too fresh, too raw. "The past came a'knockin' … I woke up one morning, and I found him dead. His throat had been … ripped out."

Dean's gaze cut away momentarily as his imagination furnished the image to match the words. "Well, I'm sorry," he said, a little brusquely.

Krissy's gaze lifted to meet his. "Me too."

She shivered and looked away, filling her lungs and letting the breath out as she looked back over the car's roof to her friends. "If it hadn't been for Josephine and Aidan, I don't know how I would have made it."

Dean followed her gaze, a crease appearing between his brows. "So they both lost their families as well?"

"Yeah," she said. "The same vamps were hunting together … a nest."

Dean licked his lips as he thought about that. "Krissy, there're a few things not adding up here. But the bottom line, you –" He looked at the other kids. "– and those two, are way too young to be doing this."

Krissy smiled derisively. "You were sixteen when you killed your first vamp, Dean. You told me."

He scowled at the ground. He'd told her about his childhood, on the long drive to find his brother and her father, to put her _off_ hunting. "That was different."

She snorted. "You are never too young to be killing monsters," she retorted. "Especially when they've taken everything from you."

He dragged in a breath. "Hunting isn't about killing and revenge, Krissy –"

"Really? So, two years ago, your serious crap – your "revenge crap" – that wasn't you?"

_No question she was female_, he thought irritably. _Memory like a fucking elephant_. "Like I said, that was different."

"No, it's not different. It's the same. Like you. Still full of the same crap."

He smiled tightly. "You got any other family?"

Frowning at the change in topic, Krissy answered automatically. "There's an aunt, in Cincinnati, I think. Why?"

"'Cause you're going to pack a bag and we're taking you there," Dean said through his teeth.

"Victor might have a problem with that," Krissy told him blandly.

"Who's Victor?"

"He's the one who took us in," she said quietly. "Showed us everything we know."

"What?" Dean looked at her disbelievingly. "Some kind of hunter's school for kids?"

Krissy's face screwed up. "Victor's helping us to learn. To get revenge for what happened to us."

"And you think that's fine?" he asked, shaking his head. "I don't care what he is, he sucks at his job. You know that you and your friends got caught on a security camera taking down the other vamp? If it wasn't for me, your faces would be splashed over every law enforcement office and every newspaper and news report in Kansas by now."

"So what? Maybe it's time that people really knew the truth about what goes bump in the night!" Krissy said fiercely to him. "Maybe if people knew –"

"You know what would happen if people knew, Krissy?" he cut her off sharply. "This country, this world, would collapse under its own fucking panic. That tape? It didn't show the vamp in close enough detail to see what it was – it showed your boyfriend taking its head off with a machete. You three look like deranged serial killers, not hunters."

She looked away, the muscle in her jaw jumping at the image. "I don't need you to save me, Dean," she said coldly, looking back at him. "I'm not a little kid anymore."

He watched her stalk away to her friends. He'd managed to totally forget the arrogance of teenagers, he thought. Know everything. Don't need to listen to the oldies. He needed a different approach.

Sam looked at him as he walked back to his brother slowly. "What happened?"

"Teenager," Dean told him sourly. "And it gets worse."

He looked at the wrapped body the kids were putting into the back of the hatchback. "They got a place to burn that?"

Sam nodded. "Out of town. I already told them to trade the car in for something else."

"Cops got a pretty good fix on the make, model and plate," Dean said tiredly. "We can figure that bit out later."

"She tell you about Victor?" Sam asked him.

"Yeah," Dean said. "What do we think?"

"I'm wondering if it's not the same Victor we met in 2012, in Spokane," Sam said, forehead wrinkling. "The rugaru job that got tangled up with our Levis."

Dean looked at him thoughtfully. "The guy who lost his family."

"Yeah," Sam said. "Maybe he's compensating?"

"God, nothing would surprise me now," Dean said dryly. "Guess we're going to renew our acquaintanceship."

* * *

Dean shucked his jacket and pulled out a clean one from his duffle as the body and pyre fell to ashes. The unlovely scent of burning meat tended to cling to clothing a lot longer and more conspicuously than just wood smoke. Cops would probably find the bones, sometime, he thought. They weren't all that far out of town.

"Well, they're competent enough at that," Sam walked over to him, changing his jacket as well.

"This hunter, Victor, he got started kind of adhoc, didn't he?" Dean said, getting into the car as the three kids piled into the hatchback and started their engine.

"Yeah, said he went nuts for a while, then began to research wendigos," Sam confirmed, sliding into the passenger seat.

"Didn't buddy up with anyone, did he?"

"Not that I recall him saying."

"Might explain why he doesn't teach them to do their recon properly," Dean mused, following the red car back along the roads into the town.

"You know, that kid, Aidan, he froze when the vamp attacked them, in that room," Sam said. "And that was a young vamp; he was easy enough to see."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I noticed that."

"They're going to get killed, hunting like that," Sam said uneasily. "Vamps aren't easy to start with."

"There's nothing that's easy to start with," Dean countered. "We did how many salt'n'burns before Dad let us anywhere near anything else, and you just about died on one of those."

"That wasn't inexperience," Sam said, remembering the job with a shiver. The furnace pipe had punched into him and he'd woken four days later on a ventilator. "That was bad luck."

Dean shook his head. "No, it wasn't. We hadn't checked deep enough."

"In any case, Dad was with us on every single hunt."

Flicking a glance at him, Dean wondered at his brother's memories of their childhood. There'd been more than a couple of occasions when they'd stumbled, deliberately or accidentally, into situations that had almost gotten them killed as kids, when Dad had been away or busy with something else.

He pulled up behind the hatchback and turned off the engine, glancing at the house across the street. It was on a corner, big yard, two-and-a-half storey with plenty of room. Paintwork was neat and fresh. Garden well-tended. He got out of the car and waited for Sam as the kids closed their doors and walked across the street and through the lych-gate at the fence.

"Not what I'd call a compound," he remarked as they followed them.

Krissy unlocked the front door and walked through a hall and an archway into the big living room. Josephine and Aidan followed her in, dumping their bags with the casual carelessness of any kid coming home.

Dean looked around. The hall continued down to the rear of the house, a wide staircase taking up half its width, the stairs starting from opposite the living room doorway. Muted colours, Middle-Eastern carpets, shelves full of books relieved the primary tones of the dark, stained wood panelling and detail. The floors were spotless, the living area comfortable and tidy.

Sam smiled slightly as he closed the front door behind them. Family home, he thought, glancing around. It felt welcoming.

"Huh," Dean murmured as he and Sam came into the living room.

Krissy glanced over at him. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "Just not what I expected."

"And what was that?" she asked, walking to the end of the room.

"A little more 'Lord of the Flies' … less Huxtables," Dean said distractedly.

Sam turned as a man came down the stairs to his right.

"Sorry to disappoint," the man said, as he turned at the bottom and came into the living room. He was in his early fifties, five ten or eleven, a lean build and a pronounced limp.

Seeing him, the memory of Spokane came back clearly. Victor had had the limp then too, had told him it was what he'd taken away from surviving the attack on his family. Dark eyes crinkled up as he smiled at them.

"Winchester, Sam and Dean, right?" he said, holding out his hand to them. "It's good to see you both, there were a lot of rumours flying around after the levis disappeared."

Sam glanced at his brother and nodded. "Got confusing, getting rid of their structure."

"Well, you did a good job," Victor said, turning as Josephine came up to them. He looked at her, opening his arms.

She stepped into them, and they embraced for a moment, Victor pulling away gently and looking down into her face. "Better now?"

"Much," she agreed, her exhale audible.

"And what do we always say?"

"Move on," she said, looking up at him. "But never forget."

"Good," he said softly. "Now, don't you have a trig test in the morning?"

She smiled reluctantly, walking around him and heading up the stairs. Aidan sauntered down the hall, raising the apple he held in his hand to Victor.

"I'm good, Victor, no tests, just need some chill time, play some games," he said casually.

Victor smiled wryly. "Oh yeah? Well, keep dreaming, Aidan, because I asked you to clean your room twice and you still haven't done it. You can chill as soon as you're done with that."

The boy's eyes widened and his face fell as he nodded slowly. Sam recognised the 'caught' expression with a pang of nostalgia. Not that his father would have phrased a reprimand quite that lightly, he thought.

"And you," Victor turned to Krissy as she walked up.

"Full report, on your desk, by morning," she said, glancing at the brothers. Victor caught the quick look and looked back at her, clasping his hands together over his heart and making a small bow. "'Kay, I'll be in my room."

He watched her go for a moment, then turned back to Sam and Dean, one brow lifted.

"Drink?"

Dean looked around the room uncomfortably and nodded. "Sure."

"Have a seat," Victor said, walking to the sideboard against the wall and pouring out three glasses.

"So these kids, they go to school? Real school?" Sam asked, sitting down on the long, plush sofa.

Victor handed Dean his glass, and Sam his, and sat down opposite them in an armchair. "Yes. And they're doing incredibly well, considering all they've been through."

Dean put the glass on the low table beside him. "Okay, so how does this work? Ah … after soccer practice and … the bake sale … they chop vampire's heads off?"

Victor leaned back in the chair, looking at him. "They go to school, and they have the same responsibilities as any kid of their age does there. Here, at home, they learn more. Combat training. Weaponry. The lore of the creatures they will find. It doesn't interfere with their scholastic schedule – or their essential social development. I think a balanced approach is best, don't you?"

Dean stared at him. "They're kids. They shouldn't be hunting at all. You gotta break this up, right now."

Victor sighed. "When I found them, Dean, they were lost. They were confused and they were angry. I gave them a family and a purpose," he said carefully. "And you want to take all that away? Why?"

"So they don't get killed," Sam said.

"They know the risks," Victor said, looking at him.

"Yeah, but why take them?"

For a moment, Victor said nothing, his eyes dark and his face expressionless.

"Because the next generation of hunters has to be better," he said finally.

"Better than what?" Sam frowned.

"Better than us," Victor replied coldly. He looked at Dean. "Most of us, we're thrust into this life by … chance, let's say. Something comes out of the dark and takes everything we loved, every hope we had. And we struggle to find out the truth, to learn the lore, to get the weapons and learn to use them. Most hunters who get into the life like that die, within a year. Those who manage somehow to survive that learning curve are embittered, drowning the memories that won't let them go in quantities of alcohol or in drugs or the sort of reckless behaviour that will get them killed within the next two, or three, or five years."

He leaned forward in the chair, his face tightening. "The best hunters, the ones with the best chance of survival and more, they were raised in the life. They learned from an early age all that they needed to know, with the same lack of effort with which they learned to tie their shoelaces. And throughout their childhoods and their formative years, they had the backup of family, of friendships. They have connections to people. They don't find the journey as lonely and soul-crushing as the rest of us."

Dean frowned at him. "We grew up in the life, and let me tell you, that's not how it works."

Sam glanced at him and back at Victor. He understood what the man meant. A memory of the roadhouse flashed into his mind, Ellen and Jo and Ash, talking and joking around with the other hunters, comfortable and easy in their lives, despite what they knew, what they felt.

"You two are … atypical, I'll grant you that," Victor said slowly. "But the fact remains that you are considered by many of the hunters still around to be the best. And your track record proves it."

Dean ignored the look his felt from his brother. It wasn't right, no matter what came out of it.

"Josephine is an All-State athlete and National Merit scholar. Aidan is so fast he can pick your pocket in the time it takes to blink. And Krissy …" He shifted in the chair. "She's a natural leader, and her father gave her enough background that she is already a superb hunter."

"And they got caught by a police security camera in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere," Dean snapped. "How is that good training – on your part or theirs? Sheriff in town had already issued a state-wide APB on all their faces."

Victor looked away. "There are some aspects of hunting we haven't dealt with yet."

Dean shook his head. "They aren't ready for vamps, either. Not even new ones."

"They're learning."

"They'll die!" Dean bit out, picking up his glass. "That the plan? Sort out the cream through a life-and-death test?"

"No," Victor said. "I thought they were –"

"Yeah, well you were wrong," Dean said. "You want to talk about hunting with family – well our Dad was with us on those hunts when we were learning, with us every step of the way. Where were you tonight?"

"I have other responsibilities that I can't leave, Dean," Victor said coolly.

"They're just kids, Victor," Sam said to him. "They don't have the experience to judge situations as well as an adult, not yet, not for years."

He glanced at Dean. "I know, I remember how I felt at sixteen, or seventeen, going out with my father and my brother. I felt like I knew it all, knew what I was doing, damn near invincible. And as long as everything went to plan, it usually worked out okay. When it didn't, when whatever it was we were after changed the rules, I floundered. I had no idea what to do about it. And if Dad hadn't been there, or Dean … I'd've died."

Silence filled the room when Sam stopped. Victor looked down at the floor, rubbing his temple with one hand. Dean swallowed his whiskey, his own memories of those times Sam had been too close to death crowding thickly in his mind.

"You're right," Victor said, nodding. "We'll make sure –"

Dean shook his head. "No, just stop them."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because they need this," Victor said, looking down at the liquid in his glass. "They need to have a way to get past what happened to them, to their families. They want it. They won't let it go and I wouldn't make them." He looked up at them. "Could you have lived a normal life – let go of what happened to you and just put it aside, put it behind you, when you were that age?"

"They'll get over it," Dean pressed, mouth compressing.

"No, they won't." Victor exhaled audibly. "I didn't. You didn't. Your father didn't. None of us do. Until we get our justice."

He stood abruptly. "It's getting late, and I have a lot to do tomorrow," he said, turning and gesturing to the stairs. "We have room, if you need a place to stay tonight."

"Uh … thanks," Dean said slowly, turning over that possibility in his mind as he stood. "Sam'll take you up on that."

"But not you?" Victor looked at him curiously.

"I have a few errands to get through, probably take me a while," Dean lied, shrugging.

Sam glanced at him quizzically. "I'll get my stuff."

They walked out the front door, and up the path, Dean glancing over his shoulder at the house.

"This is crazy," Dean muttered as they came onto the pavement.

"Is it?" Sam looked at the house. "They've got a pretty good life."

"Kids aren't supposed to hunt, Sam."

"We did."

"Yeah, look what that did for us."

"Maybe they'll do alright," Sam said. "Maybe they can hunt and have a real life."

"You know that's not true," Dean said bitterly.

"Why? 'Cause it didn't work for us?" Sam stopped on the kerb, staring at his back.

"Because it doesn't work for anybody," Dean said, his voice rising slightly as he turned around.

"It didn't work for us because our family was targeted, Dean," Sam said quietly. "We weren't just a hunting family, we were different and you _know_ that."

"I'm not having this conversation again."

Sam looked away, shrugging. "Fine, what do you want to do? Victor's not going to stop this."

Dean looked at him suspiciously for a moment then glanced back at the house. "They said they were hunting a nest, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, how 'bout we hunt it for them," he said. "That way, until we figure out what to do about Victor, they stay safe."

Sam nodded, looking away. "Alright. What's your move?"

"I want to talk to that girl who was tied up at the hotel," he said, brows drawing together pensively. "Something didn't smell right about that."

"And I'm on babysitting duty here?"

"See what else you can find out," Dean said. "Make sure that those kids stay away from the vamps."

He turned away, crossing the street to the car and getting in. Sam watched him go, and turned back to the house, wondering if Dean would ever admit that it had been Heaven and Hell that had screwed their lives, not simply the hunt.

He smiled inwardly at himself. Once, he'd been convinced that their lives had been platinum-plated sucksville. He knew what'd changed, knew that for himself, he wouldn't stop hunting now, not as long as there was something to hunt. Finding a way to live a life that wasn't completely hunting would be a challenge, however. Civilians couldn't deal. That was something that had become completely clear to him. Hunters needed each other because no one else could understand and that understanding was the key.


	37. Chapter 37 Ductos Exemplo

**Chapter 37 Ductos Exemplo**

* * *

"_This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave" _

_~ Elmer Davis_

* * *

Dean pulled into the slot outside of the room at the motel, picking up his key and the receipt from the seat beside him.

He wasn't kidding himself, he thought, as he pushed the key into the lock and turned it. What Victor was doing was wrong. Kids didn't belong anywhere near the hunting life. They were vulnerable. Sam had been vulnerable, protected half the time only by his older brother. The memory slid close … _a room much like the one he was standing in, a sound from the other room, a nightmare bending over Sam ..._ he pushed it away.

Dropping his bag on the floor, he walked to the narrow bathroom, turning on the cold tap over the sink and splashing the water over his face.

_Protecting another. Protecting themselves. It was too much responsibility for a child_, he thought angrily. _That's what parents were for. To protect their kids. To make sure they stayed safe_.

He dropped into the chair at the small table, staring at the wall. No one could grow up straight and clear under that load of responsibility. He should know. His failures to do what had been expected of him had chewed away at him every day of his damned life.

He remembered … _trying to learn to cook … burning everything because he couldn't keep an eye on the food when he had other chores to do_. He remembered … _having no friends, because he lied to everyone, second nature to tell people what they wanted to hear and what was the point of telling anyone the truth about himself when he'd be gone in a few days anyway?_ He remembered … _hating school, knowing what they wanted of him, but never having the time to do it, being singled out until a taciturn silence had been all that the teachers had ever gotten out of him_. He remembered … _being bone-tired after keeping watch and holding the flashlight for his father on night hunts, then getting up in the mornings and getting Sam ready for school, dragging himself there and barely able to keep his eyes open_. He remembered … _lying awake on the nights his father was supposed to have returned, listening for the key in the lock until his head was throbbing, wondering when he should call Jim or Caleb, wondering what to tell them_. He remembered … _motels and schools, towns and jobs, being scared, being lonely, being sick with worry that he was doing the right thing, in the right place, at the right time_.

_It wasn't a life for a kid_, he thought tiredly. He got up and walked to the bed, pulling off his boots and looking at the bedspread, unable to summon sufficient energy to take anything else off and lying down, pulling the other side of the covers over him.

The warm-toned living room, with its walls of books and photos, came back to him and he wondered what that might've been like. Growing up in one place, having a home. Would it have changed everything?

It didn't matter, he told himself sourly. He hadn't had that. And that life was a pipedream.

* * *

_**Conway Springs, Kansas. Next morning.**_

Sam walked down the stairs slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. He'd looked around the house the previous evening a little, seeing not much out of the ordinary. The basement was a training room and armoury, that wasn't strictly the Griswalds, but the yard, the rest of the house … it had all looked normal. Ordinary. Peaceful. Standing in the upstairs hall, he'd indulged for a moment in a vision of himself living here, someone he loved in the bedroom at the end of the hall, children sleeping safely behind the closed doors. Shaking himself free of it, he'd thought that the house needed more protection, nothing ostentatious. Just the usual devil's traps and so on under the rugs.

The bedroom he'd been given was in the attic. The bed was comfortable, the sheets smelling coincidentally of the same fabric softener they used in Lebanon. At home, he let himself think with a slight inward smile.

Stopping in the doorway to the big kitchen, he looked around at the bustling activity in surprise … then shock.

"Morning, Sam," Krissy said, picking up two plates and setting them at the long table on their placemats. Josephine was sitting at one end, cutting through her waffle absently as she reviewed her trig notes. At the other end, Aidan sat, cutting up the waffle of the young child seated next to him. Sam looked at the little girl on the other side of him and the slightly older child sitting next to Krissy.

"Who are they?" he asked Krissy quietly, taking a seat next to her.

"Sam, you haven't met our little ones," Victor said, walking to the table. "This is David."

The little boy looked at him and waved his fork with a smile, his cheeks bulging with food.

"And Alissa," Victor continued, standing behind the chair of the little girl who picked up her cut-up waffle pieces fastidiously and glanced at him from under straight-cut bangs. "And that's Zachary, next to Krissy."

The boy was older, perhaps nine or ten. "Hi."

"Hi, Zachary," Sam said, feeling his stomach drop at the thought of Dean's reaction to these three.

"They were already in bed last night," Victor said, smiling at him challengingly as he came around the table to sit opposite. "David's seven, Alissa's five, and Zach's ten, this October."

"And they didn't have any other family to go to?" Sam asked, looking down as Aidan put a plate with a couple of waffles down in front of him.

"No, they didn't," Victor said, cutting into his breakfast. "Social Services were quite thorough."

Sam watched the breakfast play out, wondering how much of this was a show for him, how much was genuine behaviour. It all looked genuine, he thought ten minutes later, as the children picked up their plates, taking them to the sink where Krissy rinsed them before loading the dishwasher. Aidan and Zach made the lunches, handing out the boxes, Victor checking that homework was packed, pencil cases were remembered, fruit had been included in the lunches and snacks and everyone had everything they needed.

"Drive carefully, Josie," he said and she nodded, turning to look at the row of kids lined up behind her. The front closed with a bang behind Krissy and Sam looked around the empty room, blinking.

"Wow," he said to Victor as the hunter walked back into the kitchen, picking up the bottles of condiments and replacing them on the bench, going to the coffee pot and pouring out two fresh cups.

"Whirlwind right?" he said, passing a cup to Sam.

"Yeah."

"It's always like that with kids," Victor smiled. "You got any?"

"Me? Uh … no," Sam said, sipping at the hot, very good coffee.

"You want any?"

"Uh … I don't know," Sam said noncommittally.

Victor looked at him thoughtfully. "I was the world's most reluctant father, when I started," he said, looking down at the top of the table. "I was terrified, felt like it made me too old, freaked out on the whole responsibility issue."

"That's kind of hard to believe," Sam said, lifting a brow.

"Yeah," Victor agreed. "I saw my son and it all changed." He shrugged, looking away. "I think it was the moment when I finally grew up. I know how that sounds, but for me, at least, it's true. And I loved them so much."

Sam looked out the window, remembering what had happened to him, to them. "That why you're doing this?"

He nodded. "You know, these kids? They don't have to do it like we did. Crappy motel rooms. Always moving. No family. No friends … no life. It's not the only way."

"It's the job, Victor," Sam argued gently. "You have to go where the jobs are."

"But not all the time," Victor said. "I've met a few hunters with families, over the years. They were the happiest ones. And their kids, they were completely okay with what they did."

"Until their parents were killed," Sam said, thinking of his brother's arguments.

"You know how many people die in road accidents, Sam? Every day? How many mothers and fathers are taken from their kids through the vagaries of chance? We're a small percentage of a large population and yes, there are risks in this life. But it doesn't change the fact that without hunters, without careful, competent hunters, a lot more children would lose their parents to what hunts them in the dark."

He set down his cup and looked at Sam. "When the gate in Wyoming opened, hundreds of people were affected. Good, normal, ordinary folks. When Lucifer rose, and brought forth the Horseman, thousands were affected. Normal people. In their normal lives. And then there were the leviathan."

Sam looked down at his coffee. "What's your point, Victor?"

"What if there'd been no hunters when those things happened, Sam?" He leaned forward across the table. "That's what your brother is advocating, isn't it? No new generation to take over from us? How does he think the world will be then, if there's no one to fight the evil that is growing, every day. You read the papers. You've seen the jumps in crime. Do you think that's over-population pressure? Or more demons coming out of Hell, tempting, possessing, destroying? The vampires have been on the increase for the last three years. What happens if they reach the numbers they were in the Dark Ages? Where people never went out at night?"

"Even if this is a better life than we had, Victor," Sam said slowly. "The little kids, they're too young to make that choice. You're forcing them into becoming something they might not want to be."

Victor leaned back. "By the time children become teens, they've lost a huge amount of their capacity to learn easily, to learn thoroughly and quickly."

"That doesn't change what you're doing to them," Sam insisted. "Krissy, and Aidan, they're sixteen, seventeen. They have an idea of the risk. A five-year old doesn't. Doesn't even know what risk is."

"I would never let them hunt until they're sixteen, Sam, you should know that."

"But they've already been shown what the life is," Sam said, shaking his head. "They know that monsters are real. They're being told that hunting them is a valuable way to spend your life."

Victor frowned. "And you think it isn't?"

* * *

"Like I told the police already, I'm not sure why Jimmy Day would do something like this," Connie told him, walking to the main desk to hand in her file.

Dean looked at her. "Jimmy Day? What, so you knew the guy that grabbed you?"

Connie signed the form and handed it to the nurse behind the desk. "Everyone in town knows Jimmy. He's a hero." She turned to him. "We had a parade for him, downtown, when he came back from Afghanistan."

Dean frowned. A war vet. "Ah … sorry, when was this?"

"A few weeks ago," Connie said, walking to the doors.

"So this … Jimmy Day guy … he just grabbed you and took you to the hotel?"

"No," Connie said, shaking her head. "I came from work, I was in the parking lot when this blue van pulled up. This guy asked me directions." She looked out through the glass doors. "That's all I remember until I woke up tied to that bed."

"And the guy, was he there too?"

"Just Jimmy," she said. "And he was crying. Sayin' he was sorry, an' all."

"That he was sorry?"

"At first, I thought he was going to kill me." She shrugged again. "And then, then he just seemed scared." She looked out through the door. "Is that all? I want to go home."

"Yeah, that's all," Dean said distractedly. In his experience, vampires rarely apologised. And he'd never seen one cry in the presence of a ready-trussed victim.

But Jimmy wasn't the guy in the blue van. And the guy in the blue van had done the trussing, he thought. Back to the hotel.

* * *

Sam spent the morning looking through the house. Everywhere, there were the milestones of what he thought of as normal childhood. Finger paintings and artwork pinned along the walls. Bikes lined up in the garage, along with a variety of sports gear. Toys and picture books, models and Alissa had an elaborate doll's house in her room. The house reminded him in a lot of ways of the family shows he'd watched as a child and he wondered if he was thinking of it as a set, or if the thought of six kids living in a house that was neat and tidy seemed unrealistic. They were disciplined, he thought, looking at the list of chores on the fridge, each child having a set of things to do each week, gold stars and silver stars next to those that had been completed. A lot of families might do that. Discipline wasn't an exclusive to a hunter's family.

No, he realised slowly, remembering the Marine-style grade he and his brother had grown up with, but in this life, discipline was an essential to survival. Did that make for a bad life? He'd used that discipline to study. In Dean, it was ingrained to the point that his brother would turn away from what he wanted, if the job called.

And here, these kids had each other. They had a parental figure they obviously cared for. They had normal school life and friends … another thought occurred to him … did they lie to their friends? As he'd done? As Dean'd done? He supposed that they would have to, to a certain degree. If not lie outright, then omit the details of the extracurricular training they did. Did that make for a bad life? It made for a certain division, he thought. An 'us and them' mentality.

A soldier's life was little different. He'd met the Army kids, in the towns that lay close to bases. They didn't necessarily lie about their lives, but there was definitely an 'us and them' mentality. Their life was of necessity more disciplined as well. The difference was in the anonymity. There were thousands of soldiers. Few hunters. Hunters were easier to target, at least by the creatures they hunted.

Was that why Dean felt that anything other than complete isolation was an invitation? Lisa and Ben had been targeted. First by the djinn. Then by Crowley. But they'd been civilians, he thought. Would there be a difference if they hadn't been? He turned and walked slowly down stairs. What about the Campbells? And Ellen and Jo? And even Krissy and her dad. Josephine and Aidan's parents had been normal. They'd been targeted without even being in the life. Was there any point to pretending that everyone wasn't at a certain amount of risk, every day, no matter what life they led?

He thought of Aaron, and Charlie. Of Kevin and his mother. Of the hundreds of people whose lives had been touched by the things that did lurk in the shadows and hunt people. The ghosts who couldn't move on. The spirits whose time had come and gone. The monsters that had been people once, and had run into something they couldn't deal with. All those people, they were alive, with their families, their friends, because of what he and his brother could do. Had done. Would do. The job was the job, he thought. It would always be there and it would always need doing. Was it to be left to the broken victims who sought revenge? Or to hunters like them, brought up in the life and still alive because they'd been taught what to do and how to do it.

He remembered his brother, in the years when they'd all been together, at least most of the time. Dean crowing over some skill he'd learned, basking in the approval of the adults in their life, Jim Murphy and Caleb, Bobby or their father. He remembered feeling envious a few times when John had taken Dean on a hunt for something more dangerous than a ghost, staying behind with Jim or Bobby. He'd gotten over it, he thought with an inward smile, had realised that he'd never get what he thought he'd wanted in the life they lived. But he couldn't pretend those times hadn't happened.

Dean had lost his belief in this life when he'd lost his friends and their father, Sam thought. He shook his head. He'd known that at the time, but he'd managed to forget it over the intervening years.

They had a home now, of sorts. He felt like he had a way forward, with the enormous possibilities of the order and the ability to take the fight to the enemy, instead of always being caught unprepared and half-aware as they'd been over the last few years. He knew his brother didn't see that, didn't feel that … at least, not to the point where he could admit to it. It was kind of ironic that Dean needed people more than he did. He liked people but he could live the life of a solitary scholar without a problem. His brother was an efficient hunter on his own, but he needed the connections with people, not many, just a select few whom he could put his trust, put his back against.

Sam poured himself another cup of coffee, glancing at the clock. Past midday. There was nothing to suggest that Victor was doing anything other than he said he was. Providing a home for children who had the misfortune to have been orphaned by monsters, providing the means to help them find their own justice in a world that refused to acknowledge what had taken their families.

He turned, hearing the front door open and close. Victor came into the kitchen, a manila folder in his hand.

"Found her," the older man said without preamble.

"Found who?"

"The vampire that killed Krissy's father."

* * *

The hotel looked less inspiring in daylight, Dean thought, parking the car on the opposite corner. He pulled out his phone, dialling Sam.

"You there?"

"Yeah," Sam said, his voice low as he walked away from the kitchen. "How did you go with the girl?"

"Strange," Dean said. "Might be that vampire wasn't lying. He was fresh-made, within a month at most, but I don't think he'd ever even fed before. Josephine's family was killed six months ago."

"So who killed them then?"

"I don't know," Dean said, looking around, his gaze scanning the area automatically. "I'd like to talk to whoever's driving that blue van. Other than that … you?"

"A lot," Sam said. "Victor's got another three kids here, for starters."

"What? Why didn't we see them last night?"

"They were in bed," Sam said, biting his lip. "They're all under ten."

The silence at the other end of the phone was as eloquent as anything Dean could've said.

"Their families were also murdered by vamps, over the last three months. Two from Kansas towns. One from Nebraska." Sam pressed the phone against his ear, unable to even hear his brother breathing. "You there?"

"Yeah."

"I spent the whole morning looking through this place top to bottom. There's nothing to indicate that Victor is doing anything other than what he's said he's doing. And I saw the kids, Dean, they're happy. They love each other," Sam said carefully.

On the other end of the line there was a noncommittal snort.

"But … something's definitely up," Sam said softly. "Victor says he has surveillance photos of the vamp that killed Krissy's father. The thing is … I'm not so sure."

"Why is that?"

"There's no time-stamp on it," Sam said, running a hand through his hair. "I thought he was on the level but … I don't know … I can't figure a why here."

"Okay, so you think he's lying?"

"Well, that … or he's just wrong. It's hard to say," Sam said.

"Yeah, I never trust a guy who wears a sweater," Dean said, frowning as he tried to see the advantages to the hunter of lying over not. "You want me to head back there?"

"No," Sam said. "No, I'm good. Let me do some more digging."

"Alright, I'm gonna talk to the hotel clerk, see what he knows," he said, opening the car door as he hung up.

The pieces were there, he thought as he crossed the street. All of them, or most of them. How'd they fit together? Freshly made vampires, more than one. Ergo … another vampire on the scene. Older. Making fledglings. But why? Why put them in positions where kids could hunt them? Six kids. Their parents killed. Victor taking them in. How'd that fit into this picture?

The pieces shimmered together for a moment, and he stopped in the street, a car horn blaring at him and breaking the train of thought as he waved irritably at the driver and walked slowly to the other kerb.

He went into the lobby of the hotel, still trying to pull back that elusive, almost-there image.

"Oh … nice to see you again," the clerk came to the counter as he stopped.

"Yeah, I bet," Dean said, pulling out his wallet and counting out another five twenties. "Listen, I need to know who checked into room 215, yesterday."

The clerk looked down at the notes in his hand, counting through them. "Some guy wearing a hoodie, so it was hard to make out his face. Dark eyes, kind of sleepy-looking, you know?"

"He driving a blue van, by any chance?"

"Do I look like a valet?"

Dean looked at him and the clerk dropped his gaze, thinking of anything else. Two hundred in two days wasn't bad.

"He took one of those," he said, looking at the wall of pamphlets beside the desk.

Dean walked to it, looking at the variety. "Which one?"

"One that says "Lodge" on it," the clerk said. Dean stabbed a finger into a pamphlet at the top of the rack and the clerk nodded.

"Conway Springs Lodge," Dean read.

"Yep, big during the summer season, but this time of year it's closed."

"How far away is from here?"

"Oh, it's a couple of miles down the road," the clerk gestured in the vague direction of the lodge.

Closed. Remote from town. Sounded like a good place to stash or make more vampires. He loosened his tie as he walked out of the lobby and crossed back to the car.

So … vamp makes more vamps. Possibly organises kills for them. Which means that these new vamps might actually be able to be saved, if they don't feed before he can find them. He frowned at the off-track thought.

Vamp makes new vamps and organises kills for them. Coincidentally, however, the junior Fearless Vampire Hunters club is on top of where the vics are located.

Now, how was that possible, he wondered? Victor's security vigilance? That chick, Connie, had been tied to the bed for only a few hours before Krissy and her team had gotten there. How'd ol' Vic found it so fast?

He started the engine, realising that he should've asked Krissy a hell of a lot more about how they were tracking these vamps last night.

* * *

Sam watched the children come in through the door, saw the older ones see Victor's face and immediately know that something had happened.

"Early dinner tonight, and bathtime and homework to be finished beforehand," Victor said, as they filed past him. He looked at Krissy. "We've got a job to handle."

Everyone had their snacks and David, Alissa and Zach were settled in the dining room to work on their homework, Aidan left with them to help out. Krissy, Josephine and Sam followed Victor down to the basement.

"You found it?" Krissy asked as they stood around the table in the armoury.

Victor nodded. "Picked up the footage and saw this," he said, handing her the photograph.

She stared down at it, her eyes immediately going to the necklace that was clearly visible in the shot.

"My mother gave him this," she said softly, her finger touching the image lightly. "For their ninth anniversary. I was eight."

"No chance he could've lost it, somewhere else, before he was killed," Sam asked, watching her face.

Krissy looked up at him. "No, he never took it off."

She held out her hand for the file and Victor glanced at Sam as he passed it to her. Opening it, Krissy began to read, her head bowed over the table.

"I'll get the gear bags ready," Josephine said, turning away. "We'll need more dead man's blood soon, Victor. We've got enough for tonight, but then we'll be out."

Victor nodded. "I'll take care of it."

"Who's running point and who's backup on this?" Sam asked Victor.

"That's up to Krissy," Victor said. "This is her hunt, her kill. She'll make the decisions."

Sam winced inwardly. An emotional sixteen-year old girl? Chasing her father's killer? He was seeing Dean's arguments.

"But you review what she has planned, right?" he said. "Make sure it'll fly and minimise the risks?"

Victor smiled at him. "She'll be fine, Sam. Stop worrying."

Sam walked outside, dragging in a deep breath. He still wasn't sure about the photographs or the information Victor had gotten on the vampire. Krissy's dad's necklace was the kicker. Where had she gotten it from if not from the body of Lee?

He turned his head to look up the street, freezing as he saw the blue van parked a block up. He pulled out his phone, dialling Dean's number, his face screwing up in frustration as the call went to voicemail.

Turning around, he went back inside. The basement was empty when he reached it, and he came back up the stairs, looking in the kitchen. Victor was by the bench, chopping vegetables.

"Hey, where is everyone?" Sam asked. Aidan was still there, with the children.

"Krissy and Josie have gone to track the vamp," Victor said, looking up at him. "What's up?"

"I think we have a problem closer to home."

He turned and heard Victor's footsteps behind him, stopping as he reached the front windows.

"See that blue van? Dean saw it at the hotel last night. We think he's working with the vampire we popped."

Victor looked out the window, his eyes narrowing. He turned back to Sam. "Looks like we're going hunting."

* * *

Dean pulled up in front of the cluster of buildings, glancing at the sign on his left that advised him he'd reached Conway Springs Lodge, closed until next season. He turned off the engine and got out, drawing the machete from the sheath at the back of his hip as he walked to the largest building.

No cars but there'd been fresh tyre tracks in the black mud at the turnoff. He reached for the door, surprised to find it open. Pulling out his flashlight, he looked inside, opening the door wider and slipping in, out of the light behind him, pulling the door shut.

The lodge's décor was pretty much the usual. Stuffed deer and bear heads hanging on the walls, chairs and tables covered in dust sheets, looming at him as the flashlight's beam caught them. He stopped for a moment, listening. Breathing. He identified the faint sound after a moment, pinpointing the direction and heading toward it, the soft soles of his boots soundless on the wooden floors.

The dormitory lay at the end of the hallway, bunk beds and metal footlockers at the end of each. The soft whistling breath that had attracted his attention came from the bed against the right wall and he turned the beam toward it, lighting up a lower bed, blankets in a heap at one end, a woman partly wrapped in one, her skin white in the flashlight's glow, long dark hair snarled and tangled over her shoulders and down her back. He could smell the faint scent of rotting flowers, clinging to the damp air.

"Who're you?" he asked. Her eyes weren't red, just swollen and purple around the lids, from crying, he thought, seeing them screw shut tightly against the light.

"It's too bright," she said, lifting an arm and holding it over her face.

He lowered the beam until the direct light was off her face and she lowered her arm, her eyes opening, blue irises, bloodshot, but not filmed in red.

"Got a name?" he asked her again.

"Sarah …" she said. Her face twisted up in pain and she leaned over, arms wrapped around her abdomen, a moan escaping. "Help me, please."

"Tell me what happened." He moved closer. She had a bloody scrape on her forehead, over her right eye. Cuts and bruises. He looked at her wrists, her hands clutching the thin blanket around her. Rope burns. And on her ankles.

"I don't know what happened," Sarah said, her breathing ragged as another spasm hit her. "I was walking through the park, near my house –"

"When?"

She shook her head. "Yesterday … I think?"

"And?"

"I woke up here," she said, looking around her. "My head hurt. Everything is too bright, too loud." She looked up at him. "I can hear … I can hear your heart, beating. I can hear so many things. Things I shouldn't be able to hear."

He stared down at her, watching her tears trickling down her cheeks as her shoulders began to shake. Turned.

"Have you fed?"

"What?"

She looked at him and her face spasmed again, the moan much louder now, coming out through her clenched teeth as the pain ripped her apart inside. Dean looked down at her fists, balled tightly in the blanket, at the slim muscles that were rigid with the pain she was feeling. Probably hadn't fed yet, the hunger getting bad. He blinked back the memories of how that had felt, claws tearing, as if the hunger had been a wild animal, trapped inside his body. And the smell of decomposition only came once a vampire had turned completely, he thought.

He waited until she gasped, her body relaxing as she sucked in the deep breath and a fresh fall of tears cut through the grime and blood on her face.

"Sarah, I need you to try and remember, anything else you can, about how you might've gotten here –"

"Dean!"

He closed his eyes. Krissy. And co.

* * *

Sam slowed his pace to accommodate Victor's limp, the two of them approaching the van obliquely, from either side. The cab was empty, the back, visible behind the seats at the front, empty as well.

Victor looked at him. "The park?"

Sam nodded, his fingers reaching under his jacket to touch the sharkskin hilt of the machete that was sheathed against his back. Victor had a dart gun, one in the chamber, three more of the small, narrow darts in his pocket. They walked along the sidewalk and turned into the park, the wan, fall sunshine casting pale shadows on the grass to either side of them.

Sam let his gaze move continuously across the landscape, not searching for anything in particular, looking for movement, for anomalies, for shapes that didn't fit. He was aware of Victor, to his left, moving further out across the grass, but he ignored him, letting his mind look for the clues without interference.

Human accomplice to the nest, or another vampire? Had to be a vamp, his mind supplied effortlessly. Only a vampire can make more vampires. For what possible purpose would a vampire make fledglings that were then killed off by the teenage hunters? How could the master not notice that his makings were being decimated?

How was the information flowing? Vamp to human … or human to vamp?

The movement caught his attention and his eyes snapped around to follow the shivering of the evergreen bushes on the left side of the path. He glanced at Victor and nodded, lifting a hand to show the direction. The snick of the press stud holding the machete in its sheath was quiet, but not quiet enough for a vamp not to hear, he thought. Why would it be out now? Here? In the daylight?

The blade slid out and his fingers curled around the hilt, the grip tight and sure against his palm. Well, he told himself, no time like the present to find out.

He was moving quietly, but not silently, he knew. And the vamp was behind the tree, the base of the trunk surrounded by leaf fall, mostly dried and crackling now. There was no way he was going to be able to sneak up on it. It would smell him in another stride or two anyway. It wasn't moving. Victor would be on the other side, the monster would have to run by one or the other of them.

At the edge of the trunk, he could see the curve of the shoulder, brown jacket almost the same colour as the tree, but a little lighter. He stepped close to the trunk.

The blow came from behind, hitting him on the back of the skull. Sam felt himself falling, darkness rushing toward him. _Victor_. He hoped the sonofabitch had been accurate with the butt of the gun, it was too easy to crack the skull at the back. The thought blew away as he hit the ground, the machete embedding itself in the soft soil, springing free from his unresponsive fingers.

* * *

Dean turned, holding out a hand and walking a couple of steps toward Krissy, keeping himself between the three guns and the half-vampire behind him.

"Put those away, and we can talk," he said to the sixteen-year old in front of him.

"Why are you with the vampire that killed my dad?" Krissy asked him, her voice eerily quiet and calm.

"You gonna listen to me?" he asked her, as her gaze cut away to the woman behind him. "Or just shoot first and ask questions later?"

Krissy's gaze flicked back to him. "You should talk about that."

"Right," he said. "She didn't kill him, Krissy. She was made yesterday. He died four months ago."

"How do you know that?" Josephine asked, her hands tightening around the grip of the gun.

"Because I've hunted vampires for six years now and I know the difference between a newly-made vamp and an old vamp," he snapped at her. "Same deal on the fang you killed last night."

He looked back at Krissy. "He was a soldier, in Afghanistan, when Josephine's family were killed, Krissy. He might not even have fed before last night. This is stinking to high heaven. You need to lock down your emotions and think about it."

Aidan glanced sideways at Krissy. Dean looked at him.

"Look, last time I'm gonna ask nicely, take those fucking guns off me or somebody's gonna get hurt."

"Big talk," Aidan said, lifting his chin.

Dean smiled. "I know, it is, isn't it?"

He stepped forward, twisting the gun out of the boy's hands and removing the firing pin, handing it back to him as Aidan stood open-mouthed.

"Let's say this isn't the vamp that killed my dad," Krissy said sharply, lowering her gun and looking at him. "She's still a vampire. Are we supposed to let her walk?"

"She hasn't fed yet, Krissy," Dean said, feeling the tension easing slightly along the line of his shoulders as he recognised that she wasn't going to fight him. "We can save her. Turn her back."

"What?" Aidan looked at him disbelievingly.

Dean ignored him. "We can reverse the vampirism if we can find her maker and get his blood."

"And why should we care about her?" Aidan said belligerently.

Dean turned to him slowly, his face stony. "Because if you don't care about her, you shouldn't be hunting. Hunting is about saving people," he said, biting out each word as he looked back at Krissy. "It's not about killing and revenge at any cost. We save people." He looked back at Aidan. "Innocent people."

"I want the bloodsucker who killed my father to pay," Krissy said to him.

"And we're gonna find out who that is," he said to her. "But let's not be so blood-thirsty that just anyone will do."

"But Victor said it's her," Josephine said uncertainly.

Dean looked at her. "And I'm telling you, it's not."

He looked back at Krissy. "We're gonna pack her to go, and we're gonna go ask Victor ourselves. Okay?"

Krissy looked at the woman behind him. "Why is she wearing his necklace?"

Dean turned to look at Sarah. She lifted a hand to the pendant hanging around her neck and shook her head.

"It's not mine. When I woke up, it was here," she said, her breathing getting faster again.

Dean looked back at Krissy. "You think maybe whoever's setting this up might've planted it on her?"

"In the security photo, she's walking … awake and walking … and wearing it," Josephine said vehemently.

Dean smiled a little. "And a little Photoshopping is out of the question, right? Come on, you should know how easy it is to doctor a photograph. You're all supposed to be A students."

"She comes with us," Krissy said, her eyes fixed on his. "You promise?"

"Yeah, I promise," he said, glancing back at Sarah. "Whoever killed your father, I'm pretty sure it's the same vamp who's been turning these people and dangling them out as bait for you – all of you. We need to find it, and get the blood for her. And for you, if that's what it's gonna take."

Krissy thumbed the safety on her gun, tucking it back into her jacket pocket. "Alright."

"You got any of those darts with dead man's blood?" Dean asked her.

"Yeah, why?"

"She'll travel easier if we can put her out for awhile."

* * *

Sam felt the insistent pounding at the back of his head and pulled in a slow, deep breath. _Victor_. His stomach turned over lazily, nausea rising up his throat and he swallowed against it, opening his eyes a little and looking around the room. He was sitting in one of the dining room carvers, his hands bound tightly to the arms.

"Are you trying to blow this entire operation?!"

Victor's voice came from the dining room, the double sliding doors were almost closed but not quite and the words clear.

"You used a goddamned soldier who was out of the friggin' country when Josie's parents were killed, you moronic beast!"

"They didn't notice," a man's voice said calmly.

"Not this time, but they will when there's less personal involvement," Victor said furiously. "Pull that shit again, Seth and I'll be coming for you."

"Don't threaten me, little man," Seth said. "Or it'll be you I come for in the night, and you won't hear me or see me until your dying breath."

Human accomplice, Sam thought tiredly. Just the wrong one. He lifted his head a little, hearing a familiar growl somewhere down the street.

"Get in there and kill him," Victor snapped. "We're running out of time."

Sam let his head fall again, eyes half-closing as he heard the doors pushed apart, the footsteps getting closer.

The front door opened and Victor pulled out his gun, holding it on Sam as Krissy walked into the living room, her gaze flashing between Sam, the vampire standing next to him and Victor. Behind her, Dean, Aidan and Josephine stopped and stared around the room. Sam lifted his head, looking at his brother.

"What is going on here?" Josephine asked him, her eyes fixed on the vampire standing between Sam and Victor.

"Victor has been trying to make a new generation of hunters," Sam said. "And in order to do it, he's been working with a vampire."

"That true?" Aidan asked, staring at the older man.

Dean looked at Krissy's face. It was smooth and expressionless, her eyes almost distant as she stared at Victor.

"Yeah, Aidan, it's true," she said quietly. "Victor didn't save us."

She walked past Josephine, stopping behind the sofa. "You killed them, didn't you, Victor. Our families."

Aidan and Josephine both turned to her.

"You killed them to get us, to make us into killing machines."

"No," Victor found his voice. "No, Krissy, to make you into hunters, elite hunters who could have lives that were meaningful, helping others without sacrificing everything else to the cause. To make you into the best, the strongest hunters I could."

"You turned that monster onto our families?" Josephine asked him, her voice faltering.

"Josie, please, you have to understand –"

"I don't understand, Victor," Aidan cut in. "Why? Why me? Krissy's dad was a hunter, he was teaching her, but why me? Why Josie?"

"He saw your potential," Sam told him. "Saw that you could do it, with the proper motivation, and the right training."

Dean glanced at him, moving a little closer.

"What? How?" Aidan looked from Sam back to Victor. "Did you stalk us? Watch us?"

Victor's gaze cut away from him and Aidan swore softly. "And David, and 'lissa and Zach? Them too? You had their families butchered so that you could do this to them?"

"You used us," Josephine said slowly. "You used us all."

Victor looked at her. "I didn't – I was trying to –"

"And you killed them." She ignored him, her gaze turning to the vampire. "In their beds."

Seth grinned at her, the soft overhead light gleaming on the descended fangs. "Oh yes, and they screamed and they begged and I drank them dry."

Her scream was inarticulate, her speed driven by rage that had been fed and nurtured over the past six months. Dean shifted sideways, his knife in his hand, the rope sliced through and dropping from Sam's right arm and the blade in his lap as Josephine vaulted the sofa, slamming past Victor's arm, her machete blade slicing down toward the vampire's throat.

The gunshot was explosively loud in the room as the vampire disappeared from under Josephine's blade only to run into Dean's, his head falling backward at the same time as the slim girl fell to the floor. Victor stared down at the widening stain of red colouring her side in horror as Josie pressed her hands over the wound. Sam cut himself free and dropped beside her, taking his jacket off and lifting her hands, pressing the thick cloth against her side.

"Aidan, call an ambulance!" he barked at the boy.

"No," Victor dropped to his knees, the gun falling to the floor beside him. "That was – it was an accident, she knocked it –"

"There aren't any accidents, are there, Victor?" Krissy said, her voice toneless as she cocked her gun, the barrel aimed at his head.

He looked up at her, into the small bore. "No, no accidents."

"Krissy …" Dean said softly to her, taking a step closer. "Don't."

"He killed my father." She felt her finger tightening incrementally on the trigger, getting closer to the end of the resistance. "He killed all our families, Dean. He's a monster."

"No," Dean said, hating himself for the lie, unable to let her do it this way anyway. "He's just a person."

"He's a murderer," she corrected him. "Our families. Those people his pet turned. Even Hell isn't enough, Dean."

"You're right," he said. "But not this time. Not this way. Not for you."

"Why not?"

"Because you want a normal life, and once you cross that line, that's going to be impossible."

"I can't –" she said, her breath catching in her throat suddenly, her blood pounding in her head. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't hear. "I can't … let … him –"

"I know, but there's another way, okay?" he said, taking another step closer to her, thumbing the safety of his gun on and tucking it back through his belt.

"Dean –"

"You can let it go," he told her. "We'll take care of it."

The click of the hammer being uncocked was loud in the silence of the room and she dropped so suddenly he almost wasn't quick enough to catch her.

"Ambulance is coming," Aidan said, looking from Sam to Dean as he put Krissy on the sofa.

"What are you going to do?" Victor asked, as Dean yanked him to his feet.

"Take care of you," Dean said coldly. "So these kids don't have to."

Sam looked up uneasily, recognising the fury in his brother's voice. Dean felt the look and glanced down at him as he pushed Victor into the chair his brother had been tied to, his gun in his hand again, safety off.

"Don't move," he said. "Aidan, come here."

Aidan crossed the room and took the gun as Dean handed it to him. "What –?"

"Just cover him," Dean said. "Shoot him if he moves."

He turned to Sam, looking down at the girl on the floor. Under the darkness of her skin, she looked grey, sweat beading on her face and neck. "Gut shot?"

Sam shook his head. "Passed through the side, might've knicked something but it didn't hit anything in the centre."

"We've got a lot of cleaning up to do," Dean said quietly.

"What do you want to do with him?"

Dean looked down at his brother's hands, covered with Josie blood. "What I want to do and what I will do, two different things. But I want to make sure it's airtight."

* * *

Sam stretched out his back. Lugging bodies around was not as easy as it used to be, he thought. He looked up as Dean walked back from the phone booth across the street.

"All done?"

Dean nodded, sliding into the driver's seat of the Impala and starting the engine.

It'd taken Sam two hours to concoct the evidence he'd wanted and another hour to lay out Victor and Seth so that the security camera at Fuller's Point picked up enough of them to alert the cops. Garth had come through in record time, calling Martina and getting her to hustle in from Missouri. She'd be here before the cops showed up, he thought.

Victor hadn't been lying about the little kids, unfortunately. They didn't have any other family to go to and the thought of putting them into the public system was one he couldn't face. Garth was working overtime on hacking the databases to make sure that Martina's qualifications were bona fide enough to stop that from happening.

"I thought you'd just ice him," Sam said, looking over at him.

"I wanted to, no question about that. Still do," Dean said bluntly. "But a murder investigation with no body is going to hang around for a long time, and it seemed like a better idea to give them something that was cut and dried, keep the disruptions to the kids' lives at a minimum."

"You'd be a good father, Dean," Sam said, the side of his mouth lifting slightly.

Dean slid a sideways look at him and didn't answer. It wasn't a possibility. Would never be a possibility.

* * *

Martina Oroskaya was a friend of Garth's. They'd met her twice, both times when she'd bustled about the houseboat, attempting to do something about the state of hygiene and Kevin's health. Married to a hunter for thirty three years, she knew the life, knew the people, knew what she was doing when it came to lying to the police. Dean found himself watching her in admiration as she waved her hands around, her accent atrocious and the local cops retreating in confusion.

"You two still here?"

He turned and looked down at Krissy. "Just making sure all the loose ends are tied up properly."

"Martina's pretty cool," Krissy said, turning her head to watch the woman scoop up Alissa and carry her past to the kitchen, her accent magically restored to comprehensible and soothing. "How long is she staying with us?"

"As long as you want," he told her. "As long as you need her, I guess."

"Josephine'll be eighteen in a few months."

"You think she wants to look after five kids full time?"

Krissy looked down. "Probably not."

Sam pulled the chain and pendant from his pocket. "Sarah told me to give you this."

She opened her hand and he dropped the necklace into it.

"Thank you," she said, swallowing against the sudden tightness in her throat. "It never really goes, does it?"

Sam's brow creased up questioningly and Dean shook his head. "No, it never really goes."

"I'm gonna … uh, wait in the car," Sam said, gesturing vaguely to the door. Dean nodded, watching him go out and looking back at Krissy.

"So you want to go to Cincinnati?"

She shook her head. "This is my family. I hate the way we came together, but … I don't think I'll get a chance like this again … what we've been through, together, that doesn't happen in normal life, you know?"

He did know. He'd felt the same way at Jim's, at Bobby's. He glanced past her, seeing Aidan drop his gaze. "So … what you're saying is that you like that boy over there, and you want to stay."

Krissy felt a flush of heat crawling up her neck. "What? Aidan? No … I mean … he's like … my brother," she said, too quickly. "It's nothing like that."

"Uh huh," he said. "What about hunting?"

"We won't go looking for it," she said, meeting his gaze. "But … if any monsters show up around here, they better look out."

He looked around the house, nodding. "Okay. Good."

Krissy looked at him uncertainly. "Really? I thought I was going to have to fight you way more on that."

"Well, you're right," he said, shrugging slightly. "You're not a kid anymore. You can make your own decisions."

"You're alright for an old guy," Krissy said, seeing his mouth twitch and hiding a smile.

"Really not that old," he said.

"You keep telling yourself that," she said, letting the smile out a little at his expression. "Take care, Dean. Tell Sam too."

She turned away, walking back into the living room and sitting down next to Zach.

"Yeah, goodbye Dean," Aidan said from the other end of the hall.

Dean turned and looked at him, catching the kid's relief and hiding a smile. "Aidan."

"Yeah?" He walked slowly toward the hunter.

"Listen, there's something I want to tell you, about Krissy," Dean said, letting his hand drop on Aidan's back.

"Yeah, I know, I know," Aidan said, forcing a smile. "You'll kill me if I ever hurt her, blah blah blah …"

"No, no. No," Dean said cheerfully. "She'll kill you."

Aidan turned his head to look across the living room at her.

"Your problem now, pal," Dean said, slapping the boy's shoulder. "Good luck."

He turned and walked out the front door, pulling it closed behind him. Sam was standing out on the porch and they walked up the path together, going to the car.

"This is good," Sam said.

"Is it?" Dean said shortly, stopping by the driver's door and looking at him over the roof.

"Could've been a lot worse."

"It will be if we don't shut those gates soon."

"What do they have to do with any of that?" Sam looked at him.

"They're hunters now. You don't just walk away from that," Dean said, nodding at the house. "There's only one way out of that and you and I both know it ain't pretty."

"Maybe they'll be different," Sam said, looking away.

"Maybe if we shut down Hellhole once and for all, those three can have a real life."

"Maybe they won't be the only ones," Sam muttered as Dean got in the car. "Or maybe we could try for it anyway."

The engine rumbled into life and he got in, looking at his brother's profile as they pulled out.

* * *

_**I-35 N, Kansas**_

"So let me get this straight," Sam said, turning to him. The car was dark, as dark as it could be, lit only by the dashlights, the headlights picking out the lines ahead of them. "You don't believe that what we do is worthwhile?"

Dean looked at him, frowning. "What? I didn't say that."

"Yeah, Dean, you did, a few times now," Sam contradicted him. "Lately, all I've been hearing is how this life sucks and you don't see any hope for anyone in it."

Dean chewed on the corner of his lip. "Just because I don't want a bunch of kids to get into the life, doesn't mean I think what we do isn't helping."

"Helping?" Sam repeated. "Saving people, you mean?"

"Yeah, that's what I mean."

"And you honestly can't see how you can do that, and have connections to people?"

His brother's exhale was audible and he waited impatiently.

"Why are we having this conversation again, Sam?" Dean stared at the road, feeling tension creeping up his neck.

"Because you haven't told me why you think that."

"It's self-evident," Dean said irritably. "Look at our lives."

Different approach, Sam thought, hearing the irritability. "Alright, so if everything – demons, monsters, ghosts, angels … everything, disappeared tomorrow, what would you do?"

"Sleep for a month."

"And after that?"

"I don't know, Sam," he said, flicking a look at him. "What about you? Back to college? What?"

"Maybe, sure." He dragged in a breath. "Even when we close the gates, Dean, there's still a lot of stuff that isn't going to disappear."

"Yeah, well getting the demon action locked down is a good start," he said sourly. "I like the idea of closing Heaven's gates as well."

"The monsters'll still be around. The ghosts."

Dean sighed. "Your point?"

"Do you think it's a good idea that there're so few hunters? You said that the Alpha Vamp was building an army," Sam reminded him. "Do you think that's changed?"

"And you want to have a family and raise your kids to be hunters? That right, Sam?" Dean asked, turning to look at him. "'Cause that's what it sounds like."

"I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to do," Sam said defensively.

"Good for you," Dean snapped. "Now, drop it."

"Fine."

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Dean leaned back in the chair, eyes closed, whiskey balanced on the arm. He couldn't concentrate on the books piled beside him, couldn't get his brother's words out of his head.

He didn't know what Sam was trying to say. That it was possible to be happy with hunting? He knew that. He'd been happy. But he'd been a kid, with few of the responsibilities that sat on him now. How could he think about … connecting … to anyone when one wrong move would bring death to them? Not even a wrong move, he thought bitterly. Hostages to fortune, to the whims of the creatures they'd spent their lives trying to get rid of, that's what a …connection … with other people meant.

He'd said it to Benny. Guys like them didn't get to have families. Ever. Sam'd been right about the gates. Shutting them got rid of one subset, not the whole enchilada. It would never be over, there was no retirement plan, just the crackle of the flames of the pyre when he got too slow, or his luck ran out.

And none of that mattered anyway, he thought tiredly. He'd tried normal and that hadn't worked. He'd tried cold-blooded. That hadn't worked either. He needed people, he knew that. At least one or two that he could put some trust in, be himself with. But no one had been able to hold up their end. And he couldn't take those risks anymore. There wasn't enough of him left to risk it anymore.

He straightened up, picking up the glass and tossing it back, leaving it on the table beside the books. Getting up, he walked out of the office, along the hall and up the stairs. Really not that old, he'd told Krissy, smarting at her comment. But he felt old. He felt like … this life would go on and on, and he'd never find any peace in it.

In the bedroom that was his, he pulled off his boots, looking down at the neatly made bed. He pulled back the covers, smelling the waft of the scent in the sheets and stripped off, sliding between the clean sheets with a long sigh. He had a home now. That was something, he thought, closing his eyes. And they had a job.

And he could think about the rest tomorrow.


	38. Chapter 38 Psychopomp

**Chapter 38 Psychopomp**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Dean walked restlessly down the hall, making a decision as he came into the library. Sam was leaning over the table, the usual stack of books beside him, the leather-bound journal at his elbow, his fingers holding a pen.

"Feel like going for a drink, getting out for a couple of hours?" Dean asked as he walked up to the table.

Sam looked up. It wouldn't be a couple of hours and it wasn't a drink his brother was thinking about, he knew. Dean had gone out last week, announcing the decision abruptly. On that occasion, he'd disappeared half an hour after they'd gotten to the small bar in the town and had reappeared the next morning, looking a lot more relaxed and offering to cook breakfast.

He shook his head. "I've got some things I want to follow through on here," he told him.

"Come on, Sam, loosen up, will ya?" Dean picked up his jacket from the armchair by the hearth and turned around.

It wasn't a very convincing attempt to get him to come along and Sam shook his head again.

"I'll see you in the morning." The corners of his mouth tucked in as he saw his brother's expression change.

"I won't be that long."

"Take your time," Sam said, shrugging.

"Right."

Looking back down at the book, Sam heard his footsteps go down into the war room and back up the stairs, the heavy door clunking shut a minute later and the locking rings turning. In 403 BC there'd been a prophet who'd read something about Heaven, Sam picked up the thread of his thoughts again in the silence. Something about the factions of Heaven.

* * *

There were three bars in Lebanon, but Dean always went back to the same one. It was small and had an interesting mix of customers, the beer he liked and a short-order cook that really knew his way around a grill.

Sitting at the polished timber counter, he ordered the special, a cheese and bacon burger that came with chilli fries, and looked around. Not too many in this early, he thought. He wasn't in a rush.

He finished his burger as the evening crowd started to fill the place, ordering another beer.

* * *

He had no idea of the name of the giggling brunette, having missed it when she'd introduced herself, the music in the bar hitting a loud patch. She was a little loaded, a lot stacked and didn't seem the type to be worried if he called her by name or not. Climbing the stairs to the two-room apartment, he'd wondered if it had been easier or harder to do this a few years ago. He couldn't remember.

No preliminary conversation was required and he breathed a sigh of relief. Talking to people was getting harder. He wasn't sure if that was a result of the year spent in Purgatory or just the events that had overtaken his life in the last few months. He followed her into the small bedroom, tasted the bourbon and Coke in her mouth, ignoring the bubbling laughter that spilled from her non-stop as he realised it wasn't that she was unusually ticklish, it was just her way of dealing with the situation, and lost himself in the smell and taste of her, in the feel of her skin and the way she yielded. The giggles died away eventually and he felt the last of his tensions dissolve when she arched up under him and the staccato ripple inside her pushed him over.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

Kevin turned restlessly on the single bed, his feet kicking the covers off, pushing them down to the end. The whispering in his mind grew louder, and softer, brushing against him like waves on a shore.

_Kevin … have you been working very hard on my tablet?_

Kevin clung to the shreds of sleep, not wanting to hear that voice, those whispers. Not again. Not ever again.

_Kevin … I told you about them … how they use people and then let them go … dead end, Kevin_

He knew who the voice was talking about. His eyes opened as he thought he heard a noise on the boat, the scrape of a hard-soled shoe against the metal floor. Getting to his feet he walked to the door of the bedroom, staring out into the moonlit interior of the main cabin.

_Not here, Kevin … I'm inside of you, Kevin … you can't hide anymore … I can see you, feel you … I'm in your mind, Kevin … deep in your mind …_

He searched the cabin frantically, hearing the demon's soft chuckling. There was no way Crowley could be here, could be anywhere near here, he told himself furiously. He was having a nightmare, or cracking up, but he was still safe, still protected.

Walking to the sink on the wall, he opened the cabinet above it, his eyes searching for any kind of pill to stop the voice, stop the whispering. There were none on the narrow shelves and he shut the mirrored door with a frustrated bang, staring at himself.

_Last time you resisted me, you lost a finger … imagine what it will be this time … _

The pain was sudden, horrifically reminiscent of the knife's blade chopping through his finger, the acid bite of the air in the raw meat, the shrieking of the nerve ends. He stared at the stump where his right hand had been, hearing his heart booming in his ears.

_and next time … _

Pain bit into his left arm, the sweetish-coppery tang of blood filling his nostrils as his blood jetted from the wounds and splashed over the painted metal walls, over the sink, spraying up and spotting the mirror in front of him.

_and the time after that …_

His legs disappeared at the knees and he screamed with the pain, toppling backwards into a spreading pool of red, every beat of his heart pumping more of his blood out onto the floor.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Dean grabbed his phone as it rang, hitting the call button and glancing over his shoulder at the girl sleeping behind him. He'd been halfway through getting dressed and he dragged his shirt the rest of the way over his head, frowning as he heard the frantic voice on the other end of the line.

"Slow down," he muttered softly, picking up his jacket and boots, looking back to see the girl roll over and pull the covers over her shoulder. He walked quickly and silently from the bedroom and pulled the door closed behind him.

"What's going on?"

"He's here, Dean, you have to come, he's here somehow and I can't stop it from happening, he's gonna find out," Kevin babbled over the background noise of some song playing at full blast.

"Who's there?" Dean asked, his voice still low. He shoved his feet into the boots, yanking on the laces one-handed. "What's happening? What's he gonna find out?"

"I can't tell you that over the phone – Dean, he's – please, please, come – now!"

Dean looked at the phone in his hand. The call had cut out. Pulling up the laces and tying them, he pulled on his jacket and went out of the apartment and down the stairs, taking them three and four at a time. The Impala was at the kerb and he slid over the hood.

There weren't many contenders for the 'he' part, he thought, starting the engine and pulling away without much of a squeal, heading for the road that led home. Just the one, really. But there was no way, no way in hell that Crowley could've found Kevin or could get through the traps and guards that covered Garth's boat.

He spun the car around when he entered the illusion field, knowing exactly where the stairs and door were, leaving the motor running and the lights on as he bolted to the utility hut and pushed the key into the lock.

Sam looked up as Dean came in, glancing at his watch. Three a.m. Early for his brother.

"What's up?"

"Got an emergency with Kevin, grab your stuff."

* * *

_**US-24, Kansas**_

"So what did he say?" Sam asked again, screwing the lid back on the thermos and sipping the hot, black coffee.

"He said 'he was here' and he couldn't stop something from happening," Dean said, chewing the edge of his lip as he stared at the road in front of them. "I think. Something like that. He had music playing in the background and it was hard to hear him."

Sam ran a hand through his hand, leaning his head back against the seat. "'He' being Crowley?"

"Who else?"

"Yeah," Sam agreed uneasily. "But Crowley isn't getting through the wards around that boat."

"That's what I thought, but we really don't know what Crowley can and can't do," Dean pointed out.

"You don't think he's just having a few bad dreams?"

"I don't know," Dean said. "He sounded … he sounded as if he was freaking out."

"We're pushing him too hard on this," Sam said diffidently, glancing at his brother's stony profile.

"I know."

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

Dean looked over the sigils and traps as he moved around the deck of the boat, Sam heading in the opposite direction, meeting him at the main companionway.

"Anything broken?"

Sam shook his head and opened the metal door, holding it aside as Dean turned and went down the narrow, ladder-like staircase below decks.

"Kevin?" Dean banged on the door to the main cabin. It was the first time that door had been locked since they'd moved the prophet on board. "Kevin, open up!"

From the other side of the door, there was a sharp, metallic squeal and the door opened, Kevin stepping out with a frying pan raised at head-height, looking at them and then past them.

"Hey, whoa, what's going on?" Dean flinched back from the pan, brows drawing together as he took in Kevin's face, drawn and shadowed and filled with anxiety. "What's with the SOS?"

Kevin backed into the cabin and the brothers followed him in, walking past as he shut the door behind them and pushed the levers back into place.

"It's him," Kevin said.

"It's who?" Sam asked, looking around the cabin. It looked about the same as the last time he'd seen it – chaotic.

"Crowley," Kevin said from behind them.

They turned and Dean looked at him sharply. "What about him?"

"He's in my head."

"He's … in your head?" Sam repeated, glancing at Dean. "You mean, in your dreams?"

"NO!" Kevin shouted at him. "In my HEAD! You know what that means?!"

"Yeah," Dean frowned at him. "Means we have up your anxiety meds."

Kevin's gaze cut to him.

"Kevin, you're dreaming," Dean said, more gently. "If Crowley knew where you were, he'd do a helluva lot more than mess with your head."

Kevin stared at him. He knew that was true. Knew it. Didn't change anything. Didn't change the whispers in the night. Didn't change the crawling sensation in his mind, the feeling that Crowley was controlling him.

"Where's Garth?" Sam asked.

"On a case," Kevin said, gesturing vaguely. "I don't know. I haven't heard from him."

"Okay," Dean said. "Well, what'd you want to tell us that you couldn't say on the phone?" He looked at the pan waving beside Kevin's head in exasperation. "Would you put the frying pan down, please?"

Kevin dropped it onto the drainer next to the sink, his head tipping back as he swayed on his feet. "I translated the second trial from the tablet," he said wearily, walking between them to the table.

Dean and Sam looked at each other and Dean turned back to Kevin. "Kevin, that's –"

Kevin spun around, cutting him off. "If Crowley's in my head, then he knows!"

"Okay, uh, he's definitely not –" Sam started to say.

"No, he's not in your –" Dean said over the top of him.

"– in your head," Sam continued, shaking his head. "Okay? Just –"

"– in your head," Dean finished, gesturing decisively.

"Stay with us," Sam finished, looking at Kevin. "What's the second trial?"

Kevin looked from one to the other. "An innocent soul has to be rescued from Hell and delivered unto Heaven."

"What?"

"Unto – that's the way God talks," Kevin mumbled, holding his notebook. Dean closed his eyes briefly.

"Rescue a soul from Hell?" Sam repeated uncertainly. "You mean, like actually go to … Hell?" He looked at Kevin, his voice rising slightly. "How do you get "unto Heaven" … I mean, how do you even get a soul out of Hell?"

Dean looked between them, hearing the edge in Sam's voice. _All good questions_, he thought. "We're going to need an expert."

Sam looked at him. "An expert?"

"Yeah," Dean said, turning back to Kevin. "Okay, look, we've got to get started on this … you're safe here, Kevin. We checked all the protection coming in, it's all there and it's all intact. You got something you can take when you're trying to sleep?"

"I – I – no," Kevin said, his shoulders dropping in defeat. "I'm out of everything."

"Okay," Dean nodded, pulling out a bottle of over-the-counter tablets from his pocket and tossing the bottle to him. He could feel Sam's questioning look and ignored it. "They're effective, but you wake up feeling like a zombie, so go easy on them."

Kevin looked at the label and nodded slowly. "Thanks."

"Crowley's not here, Kevin," Sam added, shunting the thought of going to Hell to one side. "He can't get in here, he can't mess with your head. It's just … too much work, maybe. See if you can get some rest for a while."

"I'll try," Kevin said, still staring at the pills. "How long will you be?"

"As long as it takes," Dean said, shrugging. "You need something?"

"No, not straight away." Kevin turned away. "I'll try these, try and get some sleep."

"Good idea," Sam said, turning and following Dean up the narrow corridor. "As much as you can."

* * *

_**Wildcat Drive, Warsaw**_

"Find me a nice crossroads, somewhere close but remote," Dean said, tossing the map to his brother as he started the engine.

"You want to find a demon?"

"Quickest way," Dean said, pulling out and turning onto the road that crossed the river. "We need someone who knows Hell. And the crossroads demons know things that the regular grunts don't."

"How do you want to handle it?"

"We'll grab the demon, take it somewhere where the screams won't be noticed and do what we've always done to get information, Sam," Dean said, brows drawn together as he headed out of town.

"Dean, this isn't that simple," Sam said, staring down at the map. "Hell isn't a place on this plane –"

"Sam, even if it isn't – it has to be possible because you went down there in your body. So did Adam. And Cas pulled your body out," Dean said, glancing at him. "So there has to be a way to get in there in our bodies, not just as souls, some junction between the two realities – I don't know."

Sam thought about it. He was right, of course. He'd jumped in the hole in his flesh and blood and bone. Thinking about it, it had to be a transdimensional doorway, but that certainly didn't preclude the fact that they could, theoretically, find another doorway and get in. He focussed on the map, tapping the closest crossroad. He wondered vaguely if there was anything about it in the library. Gates he'd read plenty about it, closing them not so much. The demons were getting out of Hell, had been for years – probably centuries or millennia – before the Wyoming gate had been breached. He looked at his brother. Dean had thought of a way to find out, he wasn't going to be easy to talk into going back to the library and searching book by book for the answer. He'd raise it if the demon didn't know, he thought.

"I didn't think there were any innocent souls in Hell?" he said, the other part of the trial returning to him.

Dean shrugged. "We've met a few people who made deals for someone else's benefit, not their own. They didn't commit a mortal sin. Maybe that's who we're looking for?"

"Maybe," Sam agreed. He sighed as he realised that his brother had been one of those people. Dean had made a deal to save him. He qualified as an innocent soul. He shouldn't have been there. He wasn't entirely sure that the act of making the deal wasn't a qualifier. Another thing he should've known, should've researched before this. There was so damned much information in the library. But it would take time to sift through it, time to study it, even a fraction of it.

* * *

_**Intersection Poorboy and Kindle Roads, Missouri**_

Dean finished the circle as Sam closed the lid, putting the box into the hole. He scraped the dirt and gravel back over the top, and straightened up, looking around.

"Winchesters," the demon said, his voice sour with disappointment.

Dean and Sam turned to see a stocky man standing a few feet from them, his eyes turning red and returning to the deep brown of his vessel.

"What happened to the hot chicks?" Dean asked, his gaze flicking up and down the man.

"I'm out of here," the demon sniffed, turning. He stopped and looked down.

The devil's trap encompassed the entire intersection and he stood within it. Sam gave him a rueful shrug.

"Maybe not."

Dean turned away, getting into the car and backing it into the trap. He got out and opened the trunk as Sam pulled out the serrated, bone-handled knife and gestured sharply to the car.

"We need to ask you a few things," he said casually. "Won't take long."

The demon skirted the edge of the trap, watching the knife as Sam drove him closer to the car.

"Want to kill me, you mean?"

"Nah," Dean said, coming up behind him and grabbing both arms. "Not unless you ask us to."

He pushed the demon to the trunk, and Sam pressed the point of the knife against its cheek, the tip slipping a little across the skin, the fine cut throbbing with a red-gold light.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

The building was two miles out of town, by the river, empty and abandoned. A part of what had once been a freight yard, storing food and merchandise for the boats to take up or down river, it was too small for modern machinery, for the ships that now plied the river's path and it had been forgotten and left to rot.

Glancing up at the low ceiling, Dean dragged a crate over to the concrete strip between the two railway channels and climbed onto it, painting a devil's trap above him with the last of the red spray paint. Sam looked at the steel chair in what was left of the office down at one end and picked up, carrying it to the trap and setting it underneath as Dean moved the crate aside.

The demon moved along readily with the knife in its back and Dean pushed it into the chair, shackling its wrists to the armrests. Almost immediately the demon began to twitch with the steel under it and around its wrists.

"What do you want?" It looked up at them. "When Crowley finds out about this –"

Dean lifted a brow. "He'll kill you. A lot less quickly than we will."

The demon looked away. Dean pulled out the silver flask from his jacket pocket. It once again held holy water, not fire water. He tipped a little over the demon, watching expressionlessly as it threw back its head and howled, steam and blisters rising from the smooth, dark skin.

"We need a way into Hell," Sam said when the noise had died down. "A way to get in our bodies."

"I ain't got nothin'," the demon said through clenched teeth. "You can bite me."

Dean glanced at Sam, mouth curving on one side. "Yeah? Sam, there's an IV bag in the trunk. Filled with a blessed saline solution," he added to the demon. "Grab it."

The demon's head snapped up and he turned in the chair as Sam walked over to the door, disappearing for a moment and reappearing with the bag, a tube and a needle.

"Hang onto the bag," Dean said to his brother, pushing the needle into the vein in the demon's arm and connecting the tube. "Surface damage is pretty minimal really …" he said, going to the bag and turning the small plastic valve. "Internal … that's another thing altogether."

Sam nodded, looking down at the demon's upturned face. "This is going to hurt like … like hell," he said conversationally. "Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to tell us how to get into Hell … uninvited?"

The demon looked at the bag he held, breathing fast. Dean turned the valve a little more and several droplets slid down the tube, gathering speed as more emerged through the connection.

"I don't know!"

Dean glanced at Sam. "I think he probably does know."

Sam nodded, the movement jiggling the bag a little. More drops raced down the tube, now inches from the needle.

"Yeah, I think he knows."

The demon stared fixedly at the tube as the first of the drops slipped through the join to the needle and disappeared. A second later, it threw back its head, the high-pitched shriek filling the big room, bouncing from the hard floor and ceiling, drilling into their ears.

"STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!" It screamed, the meatsuit convulsing in the chair, the handcuffs jerking hard as it shook with the spasms induced by the agony of the liquid slipping through its veins.

Sam nodded to Dean and he turned the valve off, tapping the line to let the last remaining drops through. The demon's eyes rolled back in their sockets as the liquid ran through its body, pumped efficiently by the heart.

"You remember the question?" Dean asked, lifting his hand to the valve again.

The demon stared at him, its expression a mix of rage and submission. "There's a way – a back way," it ground out, teeth snapping together as another set of tremors shook it. "For a price."

"Keep going," Dean said encouragingly, his fingertips resting lightly against the valve.

"The psychopomps – some of them – will guide a human through."

"Psycho-whats?" Dean frowned at him.

"Psychopomps," Sam said. "The soul guides."

"Reapers?" Dean looked at the demon.

"Reapers are only some of them, highest ranked," the demon stuttered, unable to take his eyes off Dean's grip on the valve. "There're others … the valkyries, the sparrows, the crows of Morrigu –"

Dean glanced at Sam who nodded. "Sparrows usually take them to Heaven, but the others, they guide the souls of the dead to all places."

"Right," the demon said. "You want the crows. They aren't under the strict control of Death. They know every way in and out."

"How do we find them?"

"You find someone who's dying, and you make an offering." The demon dragged his gaze from Dean's hand to look at Sam. "Crows will come to heart. Fresh heart."

Dean grimaced. "Human?"

The demon shook its head. "No, anything bigger than a cat's will do."

"Then what?" Sam asked.

"Then you ask for a guide."

"Just like that?" Dean looked at him. "And they'll show us?"

"For a price, like I said," the demon said. "They take you in and they bring you out."

"What price?"

"How the fuck should I know?" The demon blurted out. "I ain't made no deal with crows! They want something that only you give them, something that only you can do."

Dean's eyes narrowed. That didn't sound like a deal he wanted to make.

"Alright, how do we find a soul in Hell?"

The demon looked at the bag. "What kind of soul?"

"An innocent soul," Dean said.

"A soul that's not supposed to be there," Sam added.

"There are no innocent souls in Hell," the demon said slowly. "What do you mean, not supposed to be there?"

"That's what we're asking you," Dean growled, tapping at the valve. The demon swallowed hastily.

"Sometimes, deals get made," it said, glancing away from them.

"Deals?" Sam asked, looking at his brother.

"I've never seen it, but I've heard," the demon said in a rush. "Exchanges happen. Sometimes."

"Exchanges … as in prisoner-of-war exchanges?" Dean stared at him.

"Yeah, something like that," the demon agreed. "A soul like that, not in Hell for its sins, that soul is supposed to look different. Supposed to glow a little. Doesn't stop it from being tortured, you understand."

"No," Sam said sourly. "Why would innocence be a guard against torture?"

The demon shrugged. "You go into Hell in your flesh, you won't really see the souls – or the demons, unless they're only passing through on their way someplace else."

"What do you mean?" Dean asked.

"Different dimension, man, different plane," the demon said. "You can't see them really. They can't see you, really. But the demons who are passing through, they can see you. They're in their meatsuits. You can see them. And you can see the soul that shouldn't be there."

"What about weapons?" Sam looked at Dean.

"Knife's okay," the demon answered. "Guns not. Too much heat. Bullets overheat and there goes your hand or whatever's closest to where you're carrying it."

"Perfect," Dean said, shaking his head. "How big is it?"

The demon barked out a short, disbelieving laugh. "You've been there."

Dean's face hardened and his fingers tightened on the valve. The demon's gaze flicked to the bag and it shook his head.

"Huge, as big as this world," it said quickly. "But it operates on different rules. Think about what you need to find. You'll get there. Different for souls. Different for mind. Different for flesh. You can't follow a single path, in and out. You got to keep in mind what you're looking for, coming and going."

It looked up at them. "Kill me. Crowley won't. He'll make sure I end up in the abyss and never die. I told you everything. Kill me."

"No." Dean looked at him thoughtfully. "Not yet. We'll leave you here, tucked away, nice and hidden, but if you aren't telling us the truth, you'll wish you had Crowley to deal with."

The demon's face twisted. "You can't hide me from Crowley! I told you the truth. I told you everything!"

"We'll see," Dean said, turning away. He picked up a long length of pipe from the wall and brought it back, propping it up behind the chair and taking the IV bag from his brother, hanging it from the top. "We'll be back when we're done. If it's all good, you can die then."

"NO!" The demon shrieked at him. "Crowley will FIND me!"

"No, he won't," Sam said firmly. "No one will find you."

* * *

_**US-65 N, Missouri**_

"Where are we going to find someplace people are dying?" Sam looked out at the scenery flashing by. "Where are you going?"

"Sedalia," Dean said shortly. "Hospital. People die in hospitals all the time."

"What about the heart?"

"I'll find one."

Sam glanced at him uneasily. Dean was wound up tight. He didn't think it was solely due to the trial. It'd been four years for his brother. Three for him. Neither of them wanted to revisit the memories that the pit had left in them.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"No reason," Sam said lightly. "Just … never mind."

Dean's gaze didn't waver from the road ahead of them. He flicked on the headlights as the sun set, turning into the downtown area and following the signs to the nearest hospital.

"Where do you want to meet?" Sam asked as the black car stopped in the slot in the parking lot.

"ER entrance." Dean got out and locked the car, looking over the roof as Sam got out the other side. "Got everything?"

Sam nodded.

* * *

_**Sedalia, Missouri**_

Sam stood close by the alley mouth, next to the building's Emergency Room entrance, waiting. After five minutes had passed he saw his brother walking toward him, a dark plastic bag in one hand.

"That was quick," he commented, looking down at the bag. "Where'd you –"

Dean shook his head. "You don't want to know."

He looked around the dark street. "Are we supposed to put this somewhere? Burn it?"

"No, you're not supposed to burn it," a voice came from the mouth of the alley and they turned to see a man leaning against the front of a taxi, parked there. "You're supposed to give it to me."

He was perhaps five foot ten or eleven inches, with a long, lean face, short, tightly curled black hair, beard and moustache, black eyes looking at them warily as he reached for the bag. Dean looked at Sam and handed it over.

"You're the crow? Arjay?" Sam looked at him quizzically.

"You know my name?"

"We know what you do," Sam said cautiously. "We need a guide, into Hell."

"Visitor's pass," Dean clarified.

The man's mouth curved slightly at the corner. "No one wants to get _into_ Hell."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "But you can do it."

"You're mortals. It will be pricey."

"How pricey?" Dean asked, feeling his stomach drop.

"You two are resourceful," Arjay said thoughtfully, looking from one to the other. "One day … you will owe me a favour."

"You say that like you know us," Sam said quietly. Dean felt the back of his neck prickle.

"Of course," Arjay said disparagingly. "You're the Winchesters."

Dean shook his head. "Sorry … have we met?"

Arjay tilted his head to one side. "No. I had the occasion to guide a friend of yours to Hell."

"A friend?" Sam snapped, feeling an icy shiver zip up his spine. "What friend?"

"Bobby Singer," Arjay said, shrugging.

The prickle became a searing flash and Dean shook his head. "No, no, no. See Bobby, he was on the good side of things, and good guys … go to the penthouse."

The crow shrugged, black eyes shining. "Usually, you are correct. On this occasion, I believe Heaven arranged a swap."

"A swap?" Dean growled, his fingers moving automatically to the back of his belt.

Arjay saw the movement and smiled. "Heaven wanted a soul from the Pit. Crowley wanted your friend. They made an exchange."

_Sonofabitch dick angels_, Dean thought furiously. "Bobby didn't do anything wrong!"

"No," Arjay agreed. "But the matters of Heaven and Hell, they are not strictly about right and wrong, are they?"

Sam looked at Dean, his mouth compressed. They both knew, in excruciating detail, the truth of that.

Dean shook his head. "Okay, let's do this. How much for two tickets down and three back?"

"Dean," Sam said warningly.

"What?" he snapped, glancing at him.

"Come here," Sam muttered, turning from the crow and walking a few feet away. "What the hell are you thinking?"

"You heard him, Sam, Bobby's in Hell," Dean said, staring at him. "We're gonna spring him."

"We've gone over this, Dean," Sam said vehemently. "I have to do the trials. Solo."

"This is Bobby we're talking about Sam," Dean said sharply. "Now, let's face it, you have not been up to full speed lately, okay? We got one shot at this, we can't miss!"

Sam's face tightened. "I'm not gonna miss. I'll bring him back."

He walked back to the crow. "I'm in. Just me."

Arjay nodded. "Follow me."

"Wait, wait, wait. How does this …" Dean started, stopping as he realised he didn't have a word for what they were doing. "… work?"

"Not to fret," Arjay said soothingly. "We'll be back in exactly twenty four hours time. Return for him then."

He walked between them, toward the alley, not looking back to see if Sam was following. Sam looked at Dean and turned away, following the crow into the darkness.

Dean watched him go. It was a bad idea. He knew it. But there was absolutely nothing he could do except let it happen. Looking at his watch, he noted the time and walked resolutely away from the alley, back to the car.

* * *

Sam followed Arjay as the alley followed the back of the hospital building, dog-legging around a corner. The crow opened a mesh gate in a chainlink fence and walked through. The entire dead end in front of them had been covered in street art and the psychopomp stopped in the centre, looking at the flat painting of a door opposite them. Sam looked around. The art wasn't the usual … on each of the three walls surrounding them creatures had been painted, a surreal rendering of the worlds that the guide had access to.

"Take my hand," Arjay said, his gaze fixed on the door and Sam looked down, putting his hand into the man's.

The alley began to shake and Sam's head snapped up. The paint on the walls was moving, bleeding toward the flat two-dimensional door, the colours blending and twisting, moving faster and faster. He wasn't sure if they were moving as well, his stomach roiling with the nauseating disorientation as the doorway began to glow, a light that wasn't light, white that wasn't white, precisely but every colour, flickering and coruscating from the doorway. They weren't moving, he suddenly realised, mouth clamped tightly shut as his stomach flipped over, the wall was moving toward them. The door was moving toward them.

It reached them and the light licked around and over and through them and they dissolved.

For a moment, Sam was in complete blackness, hanging alone. He couldn't feel the psychopomp's hand. Couldn't feel himself. Blackness that no more black than the white light had been white surrounded him. He couldn't breathe. Wasn't sure his heart beat in his chest. Couldn't hear. Couldn't –

The landing was jarring and he staggered as he felt his feet hit the ground, knees locking, his grip on the crow shaken loose as he took a half-step to one side. Surrounding them was a forest, the ground covered in thick leaf-fall, the light flat and pewter-coloured, without direction.

"So, this is Hell?" he asked.

"Not at all," Arjay said with a slight smile. "This is Purgatory."

Sam swallowed, staring at him. "What do you mean, this is Purgatory. This isn't what I paid for – I booked the Hell tour!"

"Whoa, whoa, Winchester – detach," Arjay said bracingly. "This is … hell-adjacent. It's a more discreet entrance to the pit."

He turned and gestured down the slope. "Follow the stream, to where three trees meet as one. Where they meet, there are rocks and between the rocks … there is a gateway. A portal."

"A portal?" Sam said, brow creased as he forced himself to memorise the instructions.

"On of Hell's … back doors," the crow said with a shrug. "You can get in there."

"So, what, you're not coming with me?"

Arjay snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. Smuggling a mortal across the borders is risky enough, but gate-crashing a Winchester into Hell?"

Sam didn't miss the fleeting expression that crossed the crow's face. Fear, he thought.

"No," he said, glancing at his watch. "I'll be back in twenty four hours – precisely. Be here."

Sam's jaw tightened as he realised that he would be doing this trial alone. Completely alone. He pulled the serrated blade from his jacket pocket and looked down the slope.

"It's a good thing you brought that," the psychopomp remarked. "This is not an easy place."

There was a flicker of light and he disappeared, and Sam turned in a circle, fingers closing hard around the bone handle as he began to walk toward the sound of the stream in the valley below.

* * *

_**US-65 S, Missouri**_

Dean looked down at his hands, feeling the ache in them and loosening his grip on the wheel.

He'd been struggling to keep his thoughts away from what his brother was doing, where he was going, for the last fifteen miles, struggling to think of what he could do that would be useful. So far, all he'd come up with was getting back to Kevin, making sure the kid was taking his pills and getting some rest and not freaking out.

His memories of Hell wouldn't have been useful down there anyway, he told himself again. He hadn't been there in his body. And Cas had told him that he'd been down deep in the levels, not where Sam would find Bobby. It wouldn't have helped.

His brother's memories wouldn't help either. The Cage was the deepest level. And Sam had been trapped in it. He dragged in a deep breath. Sam had found a way to put the pieces back together. Had found a way to keep going. He wasn't sure it'd been completely successful, but he'd been mostly functional.

Could he say the same thing about himself, he wondered? Mostly functional? Nightmares and a deep well of anger, despair and the crushing weight of everything he'd done.

_I didn't do anything wrong! _

_No, you didn't, the demon had said soothingly, the razor sliding around the muscles of his face, lifting it free from the anchoring points. You just wanted to save little Sammy. It's not fair, is it? And you know, any other time, any other circumstances, you wouldn't have been here. God loves self-sacrifice. It's usually a gold-plated pass upstairs. Sometimes I think the angels are more evil than we are._

He shunted the memory aside and felt the ache in his fingers again, saw the bones of his hand white through the taut skin stretched over them, felt the trickle of sweat threading its way down his neck.

_It's not blame that falls on you, the angel had said_. Not for breaking the seal. Not for being too weak to withstand the pain.

It didn't matter. Didn't matter if he'd been played. Didn't matter if none of it had been within his control. One thing had. And he'd failed himself.

He saw the turn for Warsaw and changed lanes, looking for someplace that would have food.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

The door was no longer locked from the inside, Dean realised as he pushed on the metal handle, opening it and walking through. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.

"Yo, Kev, it's me."

His stomach was growling as the smells of the burgers and fries ticked his nose and he walked down to the main cabin.

"Kevin!"

The squeal of the hinges was behind him and he turned to see the young man standing in the small storage room under the companionway stairs.

"I believed the closet would be safest," Kevin said, by way of explanation.

"Safe from what?" Dean asked slowly.

"Crowley," Kevin said.

Dean looked away, setting the food on the table and wondering how he was going to break through this particular delusion. Kevin really needed someone around, a lot more often than he and Sam could make it, and more often than Garth was providing.

"He's in my head, Dean," Kevin continued agitatedly. "And if he's in my head then he knows where I am! You know, we should move out and find another place –"

"Geez, Kev," Dean said tiredly. "Would you chill out? Huh?"

Kevin looked at him blankly.

"Have a burger." Dean pulled one from the sack on the tray and held it out, repressing the urge to roll his eyes at Kevin's suspicious expression. Kid was definitely doing it without a net. "Come on, don't lose it on me now, dude."

Kevin stepped reluctantly out of the store room as Dean put the burger on the table, pulling his from the sack.

"Just … tell me when this all ends," Kevin said as he walked to the table. He looked at the burger for a moment. "That's all I want to hear."

"Well, like I told you before, this … isn't going to end," Dean said prosaically, sitting on the edge of the table and looking at him. Kevin lifted his head and stared morosely back at him.

"Look, man," he said, unwrapping the burger in his hand. "Other guys, they got it easy, you know? It's all backyard barbecues and … bowling teams, but you and me? We gotta carry a little extra weight."

He looked down. A little extra weight. Like it was … an extra piece of luggage or something. Not the responsibility for six billion people. Not fighting evil and risking their necks every single day. Not the prospect of no one to be close to, no home, no safe place to rest. No, just … an extra bag … or two … to lug around.

"I can't take it," Kevin said, shaking his head as he picked a piece of lettuce from the inside of his burger and nibbled on it.

Dean looked back at him, at the tremble in the boy's fingers, in the way his gaze shifted from side to side. He was their only hope. Their only means of shutting one of the worst evils in the world they lived in down. One more trial and Sam would be able to lock the demonspawn inside their domain, for good. No more possessions. No more deals. He knew the demons would still be able to whisper and tempt and lie. But that would be all. People would have a chance to choose the right thing, instead of being forced into doing the wrong thing.

"Yes, you can," he said to Kevin, his voice hardening. "Hey, look at me. You didn't choose this, I know that. But you're in it now. So you need to find a way to suck it up, because that's what we do. None of us chose this. We all got played. But let me tell you, if you get on board with getting on with it, the ride is a lot smoother." He looked down at the food and pushed the tray toward the boy. "French fry?"

Kevin looked down at the tray and picked it up. "I'm going to be in my room," he said, turning away from the table and heading back to the store room. "Let me know when there's a good day."

Dean watched him walking away, carrying the tray. The tray that still held the last, long-awaited bit of his meal. "That's my pie."

Kevin glanced back at him as he slammed the door shut behind him and he almost saw the words in the boy's eyes. _Suck it up_.

* * *

_**Purgatory**_

The forest was silent, in a way that real woods never were. Sam felt himself straining to hear anything as he moved down the slope, his own sounds, the rustling of the leaves underfoot, the pounding of his blood in his ears, seemed far too loud in that dead quiet.

He remembered how Dean had been, when he'd gotten out. On edge, every sense on full alert all the time, unable to sleep, to rest, his reactions hair trigger. He forced himself to breathe deeply, to loosen the tension he could feel knotting his shoulders and back and neck. He'd barely been here an hour and he could already feel exhaustion creeping into his muscles from that awareness of what was in here with him.

The crackle of a twig, breaking under weight, brought his head up immediately. He stopped, and turned slowly, scanning the dull-coloured woods, listening for another sound, nostrils flaring as he searched for any scent on the barely moving air. The vampire dropped to the path behind him, its guttural snarl laden with a malodorous blast of decomposition as it hit him from the front, teeth descended fully. The arm that hit his chest was like iron, and its weight took him down to the ground as he squirmed to one side, getting his forearm up and across its throat, feeling for his knife that lay somewhere next to him, knocked loose with the impact. His fingers closed around it and he stabbed at the creature, seeing its primitive weapon drop beside him as it rolled off him and away.

He swept up the stone axe with one hand, crouching as he faced the vampire. The weight of the weapon was reassuring, the length of the chipped blade long enough to make decapitation with a single stroke possible.

"Human," the vampire crooned at him, eyes deeply recessed and blood red. "Delicious."

Sam stared at it, swinging the axe slightly. It was faster, he thought, feeling a trickle of blood down his arm. Gotten in a bite in that brief flurry. But he had a longer reach, longer still with the axe. He just had to keep it off him.

The vampire broke left and Sam half-turned, swearing at himself as he had to turn back when the vamp shifted right and launched itself at him. The full weight hit him and he staggered backwards a couple of steps, staying on his feet more by will than balance, his fingers locking in the front of the monster's shirt. The axe rose fast and smooth, its weight suddenly manageable, the blade whistling low as it swept against the vamp's neck and took off its head.

Releasing the body, Sam stumbled forward, his breath rasping in his throat, fingers still tightly gripping the weapon. Now he knew why Dean's axe from this place had become such a talisman to him. It was clumsy and heavy and awkward to carry and it needed a lot of muscle to manoeuvre it around, but it got the job done. He bent, picking up Ruby's knife and wiping it clean on his jeans and followed the trail, the sound of the stream.

The watercourse lay along the bottom of the small valley, twisting and turning with the land, dropping here and there in a series of small waterfalls. He couldn't see any signs of creatures down near the running water and wondered vaguely if that was significant.

_Three trees growing as one_, he dragged his thoughts back to what the crow had told him. He followed the banks, ducking under branches, stepping over logs, checking his footing on the slick coating of mildew and moss-covered leaves that clogged the edge.

He didn't hear it. He thought later that he should've smelled it, that rank smell of a predator, the unmistakably canine scent of wet dog. It rose in front of him without a sound and he threw himself backwards, feeling the edge of his jacket flutter as the long, curved claws passed through it, snagging in the reinforced hem holding the zipper and yanking him forward.

_No silver_. The thought stampeded through his mind. Lifting his foot, he slammed his boot against the werewolf's chest, sending it crashing back into the low undergrowth. _No fucking silver!_ Sam scrambled to his feet, Ruby's knife in one hand, the stone blade in the other, as the monster appeared to spring to its feet, a deep, rumbling growl emerging from the chest. They were a lot more wolf here, a lot less human. A lot bigger. Stronger. Faster.

He spun aside as it charged him again, sweeping the stone blade and feeling it bite through the long muscles and leg bone, the wolf's rumble rising suddenly to a high-pitched yelp as it fell to the trail floor. Sam's head snapped around, wondering how many others that yelp would bring to him.

He dropped to his knees on the creature's back, driving the knife through the base of the skull and lifting the axe in both hands. It arched under him, toppling him to one side and he felt the claws punch through his shoulder, agonising pain wiping out the strength in that arm, the blade dropping a little as his fingers sprang free of it involuntarily.

One bite, he thought, turning his head away from the open jaws, dripping with ropey strands of yellowish saliva, the thick, foul breath that gusted over his face and drove the point of the slightly curved stone up fast. It slid in behind the jaw, and he felt a moment's resistance before it went deeper, the wolf's howl cut off as the length of the axe penetrated its brain.

Pushing it off him, he spat out the acid-tasting bile that had filled his throat, and pulled the stone blade free, grabbing the monster's shoulder and rolling it toward him to get Ruby's knife from the back of the skull. Stepping backward, he watched its skin ripple suddenly, shuddering against the ground.

Recovering or dying, he wondered? Didn't matter. He had to get out of here before the noise brought anything else. His shoulder was throbbing and he eased the jacket away for a moment, looking at the mess of blood and torn flesh that he could see through his shirt. Dean had told him that he'd healed up, every twelve hours here. He wasn't sure he'd have twelve hours to manage that. He hoped it wouldn't kill him when he got back to his plane.

Around the next bend of the narrow watercourse, he saw them. Three trees, growing from the same root system, curving up and outwards against the flat grey sky. At the base, boulders lay in an untidy heap and he walked toward them quickly, looking for a hollow, or a gap, someplace he could squeeze through.

Sheathing the knife and laying the axe on the ground, he gripped the closest rock, pulling back against it, face screwing up as the effort sent fresh bolts of pain from his shoulder into his chest. The rock teetered on edge for a moment then fell forward and the air around him started moving, faster and faster, rushing into the darkness of the gap the rock had left.

"It's a rabbit hole," he muttered to himself, staring at it. "This is nuts."

He picked up the axe and took a step closer, feeling the same sensation of pulling as he'd felt in the alley when Arjay had opened the door. He took another hesitant step and he was back in the blackness, unmoving.

* * *

_**Sedalia, Missouri**_

Crowley sat in the back of the taxi, watching the crow as he materialised at the mouth of the alley. It wasn't under his control. None of Death's minions were. But he had uses for them, from time to time, and there were ways and means of ensuring obedience when those occasions arose. He was lucky that the two men he hated most in the world had gone to a crow, he thought sourly, rather than a reaper. It took a very special instrument to kill a reaper and there was no way of getting hold of that little weapon now.

The cab door opened and the psychopomp slid inside.

"Arjay," Crowley drawled softly, smiling a little as he saw the figure stiffen and freeze. "Been a long time."

"What can I do for you?"

"You can tell me about your recent transactions," Crowley said, leaning forward in the seat.

"Recent transactions?"

"With the Winchesters."

He saw the crow swallow uncomfortably, his eyes closing.

"Oh … uh, yes," Arjay admitted uneasily. Lucifer had been easier. The thought flashed across his consciousness. Crowley believed in information. A lot of information. His demons were everywhere. There was no point to pretending he didn't know what he what he was talking about. His palms were slick with sweat but wiping them off would have been too obvious.

"What did Sam want?"

"He wanted to get into Hell," the crow said, watching the demon through the cab's rearview mirror.

Crowley frowned. "My Hell? Why would he want to do that?"

"I don't know," Arjay said. "I swear it. I don't ask questions."

Crowley looked at him thoughtfully. That was true enough, he knew. "And what time is Mr Winchester due back from this sojourn in Hell?"

The psychopomp looked down at his watch. "I'm picking him up in seventeen hours."

"I see." Crowley leaned forward, arm resting along the back of the front seat. "Anything else?"

"No. That was all."

"Hmmm," Crowley said. He could smell the sweat coming off the man sitting in front of him. He was telling the truth. The angel sword in his hand thrust through the width of the seat, extending as was its nature to pass into the psychopomp's body as well. Arjay croaked once, as a brilliant white light poured from inside him. Crowley pulled out the sword, and there was a soft thump on the front seat as the body of the crow fell to the worn vinyl upholstery, the beady black eyes of the bird open and staring.

"Did I ever tell you that my mother would make crow pie for dinner?" Crowley said conversationally to the dead crow. "Horrible, it was."

He vanished.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

Dean sat in the chair at the table, his hand curled around a glass of whiskey, staring at the notes that were pinned across the board on the wall in front of him. None of them made any sense, at least, not that he'd been able to decipher, anyway. He glanced at the closed door of the store room and exhaled softly. They'd let the kid rot here, left him alone to figure this crap out on his own. He'd let him rot here, he amended to himself uncomfortably. There wasn't anything they could've done to help Kevin unscramble the chicken scratches on the stone tablet, but he could've dropped in more often. Could've told the kid that he was a doing a good job, given him a bit more support.

_Could've. Would've. Should've_. Stupid fucking words that didn't do a bit of good whenever they came up.

There were a lot of good excuses as to why he hadn't been here. A lot going on in the outside world. It didn't make a bit of difference. He remembered how he'd felt when his father had vanished and Sam had lost Jess and he'd been leading them in what'd felt like circles, not sure of what he was doing, not sure that he'd been doing the right thing, for either of them. And he'd had a few years on what Kevin did now, back then.

He shook his head tiredly. _Easy to be smart with hindsight_, he thought. _Easy to figure it out when you could look back and see all those mistakes_.

_The good of the many outweighs the good of the one._

He remembered that little town, reliant on its orchards for its prosperity. Remembered being bound tightly to that tree and how fucking relieved he'd been to see his brother as dusk had fallen. Sacrifice was only meaningful if it was freely given because the good of the many couldn't outweigh the good of the one if it wasn't.

He'd made his choices. All of them had been his own decisions. They'd been pushed and pulled across the board but they'd still been the things he thought was best. And he still couldn't honestly say he'd change any of them, even knowing what they'd brought down. Well, one he would. He would never have gotten off the rack if he'd known that he was breaking the first seal.

Kevin was just getting started in this gig. How many regrets would have he have? Losing his girl. His mother almost losing her soul. Torture. There was no end in sight. He hadn't told the prophet about the angel tablet, given the kid's current state of mind, but he didn't think he could just cut him loose when Hell was shut down with a slap on the back and an injunction to go live the good life. Not with more tablets out there. The prophet was the prophet. No one else could read them. And Kevin couldn't get out of that job, not without dying.

He lifted the glass and threw back the contents, reaching for the bottle and refilling it. They'd have to keep a closer watch on him, that's all. They could ease some of the tension if they were around more, he thought. Protect him from what he feared as well as what was actually out there, hunting him. Just a bit more human interaction and Kevin would be okay.

Garth had a cabin further forward. He looked at the door next to the stairs, its surface covered in sigils and Enochian wards. He'd stay here. Pulling another one of the chairs around the table, he propped his feet on it, slouching down a little in the chair he was in, his hand lightly curved around his glass.

* * *

_**Hell.**_

The smell hit Sam first as he came through and dropped, the level of the plane he'd crossed to several feet lower than the one he'd come from.

Brimstone.

And blood, he thought, his face screwing up. He didn't know how that was possible. Dean had told him a little about the torture and he'd thought then that the souls that were here, that had no bodies, somehow brought their memories of their bodies with them nevertheless. Nerve and tendon. Meat and bone and blood. The soul was powerful and its driver was the mind. And the mind can bend reality. Especially when reality has already been bent.

The heat was the second thing that registered. It was a furnace and he could feel himself starting to sweat, running a hand up over his face and back through his hair. He was standing in a crevice in between two gargantuan rocks, a wall in front of him. Beyond the wall a light pulsed. Not a light, he thought, squinting at it where it lit the stone blocks. Not exactly. The pulsing reminded him of something and after a moment it came to him. The light was beating. Like a heart.

He shook off the thoughts, deciding they were unhelpful and stepped to the edge of the wall in front of him, peering around the corner. To either side the hall stretched out, lined with stone, the details bleeding into the non-light that beat against his mind. It looked empty. There were sounds, echoing from the hard surfaces, soft like a distant sea lapping against a shore, but punctuated occasionally by something sharper, something more shrill.

How the hell was he going to find Bobby here? He remembered the demon's words belatedly and pulled off his watch, tucking it against the side of the curving stone column. He would need a focus to bring him back here. Pulling in a deep breath, he cleared his mind and concentrated his thoughts on the old hunter, visualising him clearly, calling out to him mentally. The corridor in front of him shifted suddenly, the muttering, moaning noises becoming more distinct.

Sam stepped out into the hall and turned left, walking along in the centre, trying to keep Bobby's face sharp and clear in his head. He'd barely gone a few paces when he caught sight of something in the corner of his eye, turning to look at the wall beside him. At first, it looked like a stone wall. Then he noticed that it wasn't matt and rough, but smooth and polished. Turning his head to the front again he saw the movement against the surface, a woman's face, drawn in agony, her mouth open in a scream, her hands pressing against the stone from the inside. He turned away hurriedly and kept walking.

They were here, just as the demon had said, he realised. Not visible to him, not really. He tried not to see the images that flashed past in his peripheral vision, reflected in the polished stone blocks, or embedded in them, he couldn't be sure. The instruments of torture that gleamed and winked in the pulsing red light, the ripped apart and shredded bodies he caught flashes of as he passed them by. The smell of blood was stronger here, deeper, filling his nose and turning his stomach.

_Bobby_, he told himself firmly. _Think of Bobby_. He increased his speed and had passed the block when he caught sight of the old man in the stone, his head thrown back, the tendons of his neck standing out like wire, the demon working on him laughing soundlessly, oily black skin shining with the hunter's blood.


	39. Chapter 39 It's Never Over

**Chapter 39 It's Never Over**

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

Dean woke abruptly, his head sliding off his hand, the chair under him rocking slightly. He looked at his watch and let out his breath. Not late, still early in the morning.

Glancing at the steel door of the store room, he listened for a moment. There wasn't a sound from in there, and he got up, going to the sink in the head and turning on the tap, splashing handfuls of the cold water over his face until he felt slightly more alert. He'd bought a bag of groceries along with the fast food last night, he felt like egg and sausage, hoping that Kevin would too. The kid had to eat more. Eat better. He frowned slightly. Whatever.

Retrieving the frying pan from the drainer, he broke in a half dozen eggs, stirring them up and adding a little milk as they started to cook. The sausage went in, cooking fast and he kept the two separated, banging on the bottom and sides of the pan periodically, glancing at the door which remained closed.

"Hey, Kevin! Come and grab some of these eggs."

There was no response and he looked at the cooking food in frustration. "Kev, c'mon, man, you can't hide in there forever."

The squeal and bang of the door wasn't behind him and he turned, looking up the narrow corridor to the cabin door at the end as Kevin locked it and walked toward him.

"Where the hell you been?" he asked him. "What happened to being scared?"

Kevin stopped at the doorway. "I am scared." He looked at the table. "So I made a pre-emptive move."

Dean turned as Kevin walked past him, pulling off his coat. "You made a what, now?"

"I can't sit here like a … a sitting duck," Kevin said shortly. "And Crowley breathing down my ass … getting rid of the tablet just takes off some of the pressure."

Dean bit back the first response he wanted to make. "By getting rid of it?"

"Temporarily," Kevin clarified. "I hid it."

"What?!" Dean turned as Kevin headed for the store room. "Where?!"

"If I tell you where, it's not hidden, is it?" Kevin said disparagingly.

"Kevin," Dean said, his voice dropping. "Tell me where the damned tablet is, or I swear to you –"

Kevin spun around, looking at him. "You'll … what, Dean?" he spat out irritably. "What will you do, exactly?"

"Did it occur to you that if you know where the tablet is, and Crowley does somehow get a hold of you, we've lost you both – again?" Dean said carefully.

Kevin shook his head. "You keep telling me how safe it is here!"

"It is!" Dean snapped. Kevin opened the door to the store room. "Kevin!"

The young man stepped through and shook his head at him, flicking on the light as he pulled the door closed. Dean heard the locks turn inside it.

_Sonofabitch. _

_This is exactly how we ended up last time_, he thought angrily, pushing the pan off the burner as he caught the scent of burning and turning off the stove. _But exactly_.

The rushing sound of wings filled the cabin and he swung around. On the other side of the table a woman stood, immaculately dressed in a grey silk suit, dark red hair drawn up and back from her face. Storm-wrack blue eyes looked at him understandingly.

* * *

_**Hell.**_

Reflection or illusion, Sam wondered as he looked past the stone, seeing the room Bobby was in clearly, unable to get to it. He reached out sideways and felt the cool stone against his fingers. Turning to the other side of the corridor, he reached out again. This time his fingers passed through the stone wall he could see with his eyes, and he saw it obliquely enter the room that was reflected on the opposite side. He turned and walked through the wall, the knife in his hand, not giving himself time to wonder if this was a smart thing to do or not.

Passing through the illusion brought a tingle to his nerve ends but that seemed to be all. And now he wasn't looking at the scene through the remove of a reflection. The demon spun around, the thick-set, black-skinned body surprisingly fast, jet-black eyes widening slightly as it saw him.

He strode across the distance between them, slashing sideways and down with the knife, and the demon howled as red-gold boiled in the long cut that the knife had left in its skin. It began to dissolve into the more familiar charcoal smoke and Sam drove the blade forward, his weight slamming into the half-solid, half-smoke creature, pinning it to the wall with the knife buried deep inside of it, its scream dying away in the small room.

He turned to see Bobby lying on a stone table, the angle set at forty-five degrees from horizontal, hands and feet bound tightly to the corners. When he'd seen him in the reflection, most of his insides had been removed, draped over his arms and legs. Now, he was whole again, thinner, his face hollowed out and shadowed with pain, but not ripped to shreds.

"Bobby?"

The old man's eyes opened slowly, disbelievingly, closing again in disappointment as they passed over him without seeing him, Sam thought.

"Bobby, I'm here," he tried again. Bobby didn't move, didn't answer.

Sam moved to the table and slid the pins from the shackles at his feet, letting the chains drop to the floor and going to the head to do the same to his hands. The noise, the sight of his bonds falling away, brought Bobby back and Sam watched him sit up cautiously, eyes narrowed as he searched the room again.

"Who's there?" his voice was cracked and hoarse, and the end of the last word disappeared in a fit of coughing.

"It's Sam, Bobby," Sam said loudly, walking to him. He put his hand on the soul's shoulder and saw Bobby flinch away from it, rolling off the other side of the table and dropping into a stiff-kneed crouch.

That wasn't working, Sam thought tiredly. Nothing was ever easy. The idea that came was a little left field, but he was running out of options, and he had to be able to communicate with Bobby's soul, had to be able to get through to him, somehow, or he'd never be able to get him out of here.

He set the knife against the top of his forearm and made a long, shallow cut, dipping his finger in the blood that welled up in it and moving beside the table.

"Sam," he muttered, writing out the word on the stone.

Bobby's eyes widened as he saw the letters forming on the stone surface. "Sam?"

"Here," Sam continued, dipping his finger into the cut again. "Rescue. You."

"Bullshit," Bobby whispered, watching the letters form the words. "Bullshit, this is another delusion. Another hallucination."

"No. Bullshit." Sam laboriously wrote out. "C'mon, Bobby, get it, I'm running out of blood here."

"Sam?" Bobby took a step around the table. "That really you?"

"Yes," Sam wrote with relief.

"I can't see you," Bobby said, stating the obvious. "Can you … there's a legend … I don't know if it's true or not … hell, I don't know if I could do it or not …"

"What?" Sam wrote quickly.

"If you're real, here in your body, I might be able to see you if I can – see a soul is supposed to be able to see everything, if it tastes mortal blood … I mean, it's a long shot, probably not a snowball's of it being right, you know how those legends are –"

He stopped talking as Sam walked around the table and smeared a fingertip over his mouth, the blood bright against Bobby's pale lips. Sam held his breath as Bobby licked it off. The light, the beating, pulsing light, froze in the room for a micro-second and Bobby blinked rapidly.

"Jesus, Sam, it's you," the old man breathed, staring straight at him. "What the hell are you doing here? Please don't tell me that you –"

"No, Bobby. No. I'm good." Sam grinned shakily. "Long story, we gotta get out of here, Bobby. You're not supposed to be here."

"Tell me about it," Bobby shook his head and stepped forward, throwing his arms around the younger man. Sam returned the hug, his nervous system buzzing slightly with a combination of relief and anxiety. Time was ticking away. They had to get back to Purgatory.

"Alright, grab my hand," he said, turning back to the doorway of the cell. "I left my watch near our exit and –"

He closed his eyes, focussing hard on the image and felt the corridors and cell and floor shift around him. Beside him, he heard Bobby's sharply indrawn breath.

The watch was there, half-hidden in the shadow of the curved stone, just as he'd left it. He let out his breath and grabbed it, looking down at the time. The hands had stopped and he felt his chest constrict suddenly.

"Watch has stopped," he said tersely. Bobby nodded.

"Mine too. Time's different here."

"You think it'll catch up when we get out?"

"Yeah, better hope so anyway, if you're on some kind of schedule," Bobby shrugged.

"Hey!"

They both turned at the shout from the end of the corridor.

"Fight or run?" Bobby snapped at Sam. Sam looked at the demons running toward them.

"Run," he said, sliding in behind the wall and pushing Bobby ahead of him. "To the draught."

This time the vertiginous wrench wasn't such a shock. He stumbled over the height difference, slamming into Bobby as the older hunter staggered forward into Purgatory's flat light. Behind them, the hole remained dark and empty.

* * *

_**Amherst, Massachusetts**_

Crowley slammed the book down on the desk, staring at the high, delicately plastered ceiling above him. He turned and looked at the tall, austere woman in front of his desk.

"Am I the only one who sees the urgency of this situation?" he asked, voice rising as his irritation grew.

"Sir, every demon on this plane is –"

"Something is going on," Crowley interrupted coldly. "My hellhound has been killed. Winchester, jumbo-sized, is trying to break into the mothership … and that prophet of theirs is madly translating away … add it up!"

"We can't locate the Winchesters, sir, their protection is too –"

"Did I ask what you couldn't do?" Crowley snapped. "Tell me what you can do!"

The woman drew in a deep breath. "I have demons tracking through every phone record incoming and outgoing to every number in the country, looking for a link to the Trans, sir," she said quietly. "We're also running traces on any unusual activity to find hunters –"

She stopped at the knock on the door, dropping her gaze and turning slightly to face it.

"Mr Crowley is extremely busy, Rhonda –"

"What?" Crowley ignored her, walking to the door.

"We've located the missing demon, sir," Rhonda said, looking down at the floor. "He's in Missouri. He told the demons who found him that he was being held by the Winchesters, sir."

Crowley looked at her speculatively. "Did he?"

Without turning to look behind him, he snapped his fingers. "You're fired."

The tall woman turned from flesh to ash as Crowley lowered his hand. "Rhonda, is it?"

"Yes, sir," Rhonda confirmed, swallowing at the small pile of ash on the floor.

"Let's see how you handle responsibility," Crowley said, turning away. "There's an opening for a personal assistant now."

"Yes, sir."

"Bring me that demon," he told her. "Make sure he arrives here in perfect condition."

"Yes, sir."

"Something's going on, Rhonda," Crowley said consideringly, staring out the long, multi-paned windows to the gardens beyond. "Something to do with my tablet." He turned to look at her. "I need Kevin Tran, Rhonda. And I need his half of the tablet. Apparently, his half has the good stuff, whereas mine has the acknowledgements and 'About the Author'!"

"Yes, sir."

He frowned at her in annoyance. "Not too obsequious, Rhonda. Just get on with it."

She bit back the automatic response, and dropped her gaze, backing out of the doorway and closing the door behind her.

"Left one of your informants behind, did you, Dean?" Crowley turned back to the window. "That wasn't very bright, was it?"

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

"Kids," the woman said. "So cute when they're little, but then they turn into teenagers and the party's over." She smiled ruefully at him. "We haven't been formally introduced, Dean," she continued, walking toward him and holding her hand out. "My name is Naomi."

Dean backed away from her, the back of his neck prickling. "Oh, I know who you are." He looked dismissively down at the extended hand. "And I know what you did to Cas after he got out of Purgatory."

"After I rescued him from Purgatory, you mean," she corrected him, a touch acerbically. "At the cost of many angels' lives."

"You screwed with his head," Dean said, staring at her. "And had him spy on us."

The last few words came out a lot more angrily than he'd thought they would. Those memories weren't going to let him go, he thought, his expression smoothing out as he tried to get them back down behind the wall.

"Well, it is true, I have spoken to Castiel many times," she said, her gaze cutting away to the right. "Trying to reach out to him, trying to help him," she added, looking back at him. "Dean, you must have noticed how Purgatory changed him? I mean, he's been unstable in the past, but I was shocked by how damaged he is now."

"Stop, okay?" Dean said, his voice thick with disgust. "Don't, don't try to spin this. You think I don't know that you told him to try and kill me?"

She looked at him, eyes widening slightly. "No one ever – oh … I suppose that might have been how he would've heard it," she said, her gaze and shoulders dropping as she seemed to realise something. "When I learned of the angel tablet, I did tell Castiel to get it – at _any_ cost. That's my job," she said frankly. "To protect Heaven."

He looked at her, looking for the cracks. Cas hadn't been himself, hell, for years now. But he was still prepared to back his word over this woman, who was too slick, too practised at lying, especially for an angel.

"I'm a warrior, Dean. Just as you are," she continued. "What would you expect? And now, Castiel is out there, on his own, not knowing what he's doing or why, with an object that could bring down not only Heaven but every plane of Creation ..." She looked away, swallowing. "I'm scared. For all of us."

Dean smiled derisively. "Nice speech, but save it. See, I don't trust angels. Which means I don't trust you."

"And yet, you haven't warded this place against us," Naomi said lightly, looking around. She watched Dean's face harden. "I know. You are hoping that Castiel will return to you. I admire your loyalty. I only wish he felt the same way. I know you don't want to believe it, Dean, but you and I are on the same side."

He made a small, noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and she smiled.

"Shutting the gates of Hell. Bringing Castiel in from the cold," she said to him. "Take a moment. Think about what I've told you."

She started to turn and stopped. "Oh, I know you've been doing business with a crow – Arjay, I believe? He did mention, didn't he, that the gate he uses to get into Hell is through Purgatory?"

Dean stared at her, the revelation crashing into him like a freight train.

"Sometimes he doesn't mention that," she added lightly. "I thought you'd better know. You see, we can be of help to one another."

The sound of beating wings filled the small cabin and she was gone, leaving Dean to stare at the wall sightlessly.

_Through Purgatory_, he thought. _Sam and Bobby would be in Purgatory_.

* * *

_**Sedalia, Missouri**_

Dean swerved into the empty parking space opposite the alley mouth and killed the engine, grabbing the keys and getting out in a single motion. The yellow taxi was still parked there, and he walked fast across the street, stopping by the driver's side door as he saw the shape of the crow in the front seat.

"Arjay?" He rapped on the window with the side of his fist. "Hey!"

Inside the taxi, there was no movement, no response. The psychopomp leaned back against the seat, mouth open and Dean looked closer, his hand closing around the door handle and pulling the door open. From the interior of the car, the mixed scents of anchovy pizza and the first faint outriders of decomposition wafted out over him.

Dead. For hours. He shut the door, absently wiping his prints from the handle and leaned against the side of the car, rubbing the heel of his hand over one brow.

What now? There had to be a way, he thought, fighting down the panic that wanted to explode. There was always a way. He stared at the alley walls. There was only one person he knew who could get into Purgatory … and out again. He felt his heart sink as he realised what he had to do, what he had to ask.

He'd told Sam that he'd lost the vampire's number. It hadn't been the whole truth. But he'd let him go. Cut him loose when he'd been hurting and left him to sink or swim on his own. He sucked in a breath. Didn't matter, he was the only one who could do it. And he was the only one he could ask for help. There just wasn't anyone else.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he punched in the number, wondering if Benny had even kept that cell phone. It was ringing, and a moment later, the familiar long-drawn out and soft Louisiana drawl filled his ear, the surprise muted by a warmth and a happiness that was evident even across the airwaves.

"Hey, yeah, it's me," Dean said, feeling his throat closing up.

"Dean, I'm real pleased to hear your voice, man, but you said we were done and that was a while ago?" Benny's voice sounded uncertain, the warmth dissipating under his doubt.

"I know. I know, man, it's been a while," Dean said uncomfortably, walking up the alley as he talked. "I mean, I wanted to call, I did. I just … I just thought it might be better if I didn't." He felt his face screwing up at that lie. He'd wanted to call. He couldn't. Not and keep Sam happy. And he never would've called the vampire again if it hadn't been necessary. Now he was lying to the one friend who'd never let him down. He looked down at the ground, wondering if the vampire knew.

"S'okay, man, it's just real good to hear your voice," Benny said, hearing the discomfort, the little pauses. The hunter had been proud of his ability to lie, but he sucked at it, really. When it came to the people he cared about, he was hopeless.

"How you been?" Dean asked.

"Oh, you know, I get by," he said, pulling the tube from a blood bag and sticking it in the corner of his mouth. He was nearly out again. Have to do something about that. He couldn't tell Dean how it had been. Once, he could've. Not now.

Dean heard the edge in his voice, could see, in his mind's eye, the expression that would be on the vampire's face, his gaze cutting to one side as he veered away from the truth. "I guess I let you down, huh?"

"I'm just happy as hell to hear from you," Benny said, his own relief outweighing the guilt that riddled Dean's voice.

"You might change your mind about that," Dean told him.

"Why? What you mean?" Benny asked, hearing the nervousness in the man's voice. That was different. He'd never heard that before. Not down in monsterland. Not up here. He'd heard grief, anger, suspicion, affection … never even suspected Dean was capable of getting anxious about anything.

"Benny, I gotta ask you a favour," Dean said, swallowing uncomfortably. "It's a big one."

* * *

_**Purgatory**_

"Where the hell is this?" Bobby looked around at the forest, the even, grey light.

"Don't get all pissed off," Sam said, looking at his watch. "We're in Purgatory."

"Balls," Bobby said.

Shrugging, Sam moved past him. "Let's go."

He started to climb the slope, cutting across it at the same time, relying on his sense of direction to take him back to the place Arjay would meet them. He could hear Bobby climbing behind him, the soft panting and the occasional grunt of effort. He hoped Bobby's reflexes were good. The damned in here moved fast, faster than he'd been able to believe, at first.

"Alright," he turned and extended his hand to the older man, pulling him up the last steep section and onto the relative flatness of the trail. "Not that much further."

Bobby shook his head dismissively. He'd keep up or Sam could leave him behind. He'd realised that he'd carried all the memories of his body down into the pit with him, but he hadn't been able to jettison them, not even when the pain had become more than he could bear. He couldn't do anything about his lack of wind and aching muscles now either.

"So how many more of these trials after this?" he asked the man striding beside him.

"Just one," Sam said distractedly, looking around the forest and checking his watch. "We don't know what it is yet, Kevin's still translating."

"Jus', feels so good to be back in action again," Bobby said, raising a brow at Sam. "Might be handy to have me around to help?"

Sam stopped, turning to Bobby, his expression torn. "Bobby, I'd love that, believe me." He pulled in a breath. "We burned your bones, Bobby. There's nothing left to tie you to earth."

Bobby looked away. He would'a done the same, he knew it. He'd wanted to give Dean a pyre, and it was just as well that his brother hadn't let him.

"Okay, yeah."

"The other thing is," Sam said slowly. "For this trial to be completed … your soul has to enter Heaven."

Bobby nodded. Two very good reasons. He couldn't argue with them. Wasn't going to. "Yeah … yeah, well. You know, I always figured that'd be the end of it, going up on a pyre, hunter's funeral. Zip. Nothing." He shrugged. "And I was okay with that."

He looked back at Sam, his expression derisory. "Imagine my surprise …"

Sam's mouth twisted into a rueful smile. "Although, if there has to be an eternity, I'd pick Heaven over Hell."

"Yeah, 'cause there's nothing screwy goin' on up there," Bobby said, rolling his eyes.

"I wish I made the rules," Sam said, turning around to look around them again. He could feel eyes on him, watching them, considering them.

"Yeah, well, I'll do my part," Bobby said, sighing. "Get to the end of this, but … I ain't exactly the retiring type, so you two figure out a way to spring me …"

Sam turned curiously to him. "Yeah, but … don't you want to see Karen again, maybe Rufus? Or Ellen?"

Bobby stopped and looked at him. "Thought I couldn't do that?"

Sam shrugged. "That was then. Cas said a lot of things had changed."

Bobby thought about that. If that was what waiting for him, it changed a lot. A real lot. His attention was drawn back to Sam, who was turning around and around like a dog about to settle for a sleep, staring at the forest around them.

"Well, let's get topside."

Sam didn't answer, peering at the trees.

"What's going on, Sam?"

"This is it," Sam said, turning back to him. "I'm sure of it."

"Where your cabbie s'posed to meet you?" Bobby asked, looking around the clearing.

"Yeah," Sam said, his voice filling with tension as he lifted his hand again to look at his watch. "At exactly … now."

"So … he's runnin' a little late," Bobby suggested.

"No. See that's the thing, he was very specific, Bobby," Sam said vehemently. "Like, to the minute."

Bobby felt his stomach drop. "And if he doesn't show?"

"We got no way out," Sam said, looking at him uneasily.

"How the hell did Dean get out?" Bobby stared at him, his mind flipping through everything he'd read, heard or imagined about Purgatory.

"He had help," Sam said. "A vampire showed him a gate."

Bobby snorted. "Out of the goodness of its bloodsucking heart?"

Sam shook his head. "For a ride back to the real world."

Bobby's amusement vanished. "And Dean agreed to that? Didn't welch on the deal when it came due?"

"It wasn't … he wasn't your usual type of vampire, Bobby," Sam said slowly. "Dean wouldn't talk much about it, but Benny earned his trust."

Bobby opened his mouth and closed it again. That was something. That really was something. He heard something in Sam's voice and looked at him.

"You didn't trust him?"

Sam shook his head. "No."

Bobby looked at him. Something had happened between them, something bigger and deeper than he'd seen before. Something had been broken.

* * *

_**Sedalia, Missouri**_

Dean moved the Impala off the street and into the alley and turned off the engine. It would take Benny about five hours to get here, and he couldn't leave, couldn't do anything but sit and wait for him, his stomach churning at what he was going to ask for, at the thoughts of the vampire's reaction.

He never should've cut him loose, he thought, tipping his head back against the seat and closing his eyes. Never should have let his need for Sam's approval go that far. Fuck, he'd lost everything and it'd helped with Sam, a little, he guessed, but not enough to cover the cost.

It hadn't been the first betrayal, and he thought that it hadn't even been the worst, but it had broken something, something that he'd been holding onto, something that he'd needed, for himself. And even if this all worked out the way he wanted it to, the way he hoped it would, he didn't think he'd be able to get that back.

_I guess I'm not the man either of our dads wanted me to be._

He wasn't the man he'd wanted to be. The things he'd believed in, the things he'd held onto, they'd all been smashed and broken, trodden underfoot, some of them by others, some by himself. The most important ones had been fractured by what he'd done.

His brother had talked of a light at the end of the tunnel, a way to live with who they'd become, with what they did … he couldn't see a way to do that. He couldn't see a way to even getting close to it. What he'd done, it had made him who he was now. And who he was now … he couldn't let anyone else see it. There were too many edges that cut now. Too many things he could no longer look at it or think about. Too many wounds inside that were festering, and poisoning him and little by little, he thought bleakly, killing him.

Benny had been a good friend. His best friend. Had never let him down. Had risked his life to save him and had never given him any reason to doubt him. And he'd known, known what the vampire had needed. Known that Benny had needed him to stay good, to stay human.

If he agreed to this, Dean thought, to hell with it all. He wasn't going to cut him loose again. Sam would have to live with it. He'd protect him from any hunter and if that meant he was targeted as well, so be it.

* * *

The rattle and bang of the rust-bucket pickup woke him, pulling into the mouth of the alley just as dawn cleared the city buildings. He'd caught about three hours, he thought, climbing out of the car, shivering a little in the cold air. It would be enough.

"Thanks," Dean said as Benny got out of the pickup. "I mean it."

Benny smiled, a slow, three-cornered smile that crinkled up his eyes. "You don' look so good, _cher_."

Dean dragged in a deep breath. "It's a – it's complicated," he said, shaking his head. "Short version, my brother's in Purgatory and the guide that took him there is dead. I need your help."

Benny looked at him carefully, eyes narrowing a little. "Only one way I can get into Purgatory, Dean."

"I know," he said apologetically, his voice low and deep. "If you want nothing to do with this, I completely understand."

Benny whistled softly. "Wow, Dean Winchester asks for a favour, he not screwing around," he said, laughing uncomfortably.

"Benny, sending you back there was the last thing I ever wanted to do," Dean said.

"I know, _cher_, I know," Benny said, looking down at the ground. He could hear the reluctance in the man, could see it in his face. He was strung up between two choices that must have been tearing him apart for the last five hours, and Benny could see he wasn't lying about the backdoor clause. It might well kill him, but he was asking for help, he wasn't going to try and take it by force.

Not that it would've helped much to try that, Benny considered. It was still somethin' to see Dean in a place where he was a hair's breadth from begging. He didn't like it. He didn't like it all.

"My little brother is stuck down there," Dean continued.

Benny looked up at him, mouth lifting to one side. "This be the little brother that wants to kill me, right?"

Dean didn't smile. "You got access to the place –"

"By access, you mean getting beheaded?" Benny clarified the concept for both of them. "Dying."

Dean looked away. "Yeah, you're right, it's –"

"Oh, c'mon, Dean," Benny said, his throat tightening as he watched the expressions chase over the man's face. He felt things too deep. They both did. It was, Benny thought, what they had in common. And he couldn't look at it now. "You know I love a challenge."

Dean looked at him, eyes widening fractionally, uncertainly. "You serious?"

The smile fell away. "Hey. He's your brother," Benny said, as if it was the only self-evident answer. "I say, let's do this."

"I owe you," Dean said, the words coming out raggedly through a thinly held thread of control.

Benny shook his head dismissively. "No, you don't owe me nothin'."

He looked away, hiding the sneaking feeling of relief that was trickling through him. "Truth is, Dean … I could use a break from all this … all this ... everything," he added.

"Has it really been that tough?"

Benny glanced back at him. Neither one of them could lie for shit to the other. "I'm not a good fit, Dean," he said simply. "Not with the vampires, for sure not with the humans. I don't belong."

He thought of Andrea and of Elizabeth. All his hopes. All his dreams. All of them gone.

"After a while, that starts to wear on you," he said, brows drawing together as he tried to explain. And the last few months, he'd come so close. So close to being a monster and giving up. He needed people, not many, just one or two. To trust. To care about. To put his back against.

Dean watched him struggle with the words, with the emotions that was driving that struggle. No light at the end of the tunnel for Benny either, he thought. No place to fit. No place to be himself and rest.

The vampire looked at his friend, seeing the understanding in his face, deep in his eyes. He turned away and forced a laugh, shaking his head. "Hell, cry me a river, like you need to hear all my crap."

"When you get back up here," Dean said abruptly. "We're gonna fix all that, okay?"

Benny looked at the ground. "When I get back?"

Dean felt a stab of guilt as he realised the vampire hadn't expected to come back. "You find the place, Benny and you ride out of Purgatory with Sam, just like you did with me. Okay?"

Benny closed his eyes, nodding a little.

"As soon as I send you back, I'm gonna haul my ass up to Maine and I'm going to be waiting there for you as soon you hit topside," Dean said, making it a promise. At the speed limit, it was a twenty-five hour drive. He wasn't going to be doing the speed limit.

Benny nodded again. "Yeah, that – that sounds like a plan, _cher_," he agreed. "Let's get on with it."

"You sure about this?" Dean looked at him. There was a lot there, behind the vampire's eyes. But he didn't know what it was, couldn't see the shape of it.

"Not my first rodeo, man," Benny told him quietly.

Dean turned to the car, pulling out the machete and slipping it free of the sheath. It was short, thick blade, serrated along the back, honed to a razor fine edge along the curve. Not weighted enough to use for decapitation … unless you had a lot of muscle and a good aim.

Holding out his hand, Dean looked at Benny. He could do this. He could do it knowing he could bring him back. He hoped the vamp was seeing that too.

Benny looked down at his hand and took it, closing his fingers tightly around Dean's. Dean pulled him close.

"Thank you," he said, knowing it wasn't enough, not nearly enough. He didn't have anything else. Not right now. He felt Benny's sharp nod, against his neck and shoulder.

Letting go, they stepped back and Benny huffed out a breath, lifting his head, giving Dean a good, clean target. Dean raised the machete and dropped his gaze from Benny's eyes to his throat. All of his weight behind the single stroke. No fuckups.

The blade sang as it split the air, and bit through the vampire's neck. Dean felt his gorge rise and swallowed hard as he watched Benny's head bounce on the asphalt. _You'll get him back_, he told himself angrily, wiping the blade clean and replacing it in the sheath, tossing it back into the car. _You'll get him back and this time you'll do it all right_. If Sam was going to be risking his neck on the trials, he could use back up and Benny was the best he'd ever hope for. _You'll do it right, and he'll be fine when he can see himself through your eyes, see his humanity through you_.

He opened the trunk and grabbed the drop sheet, spreading it over the vampire's body and rolling him up in it, picking up the head and Benny's cap, and wrapping both in a separate plastic sheet. Picking up the body, he eased it into the shallow space above the weapons in the trunk, setting the head in separately and wedging it behind the vampire's body.

The trunk lid made a thick clunk as he shut it, too similar to the noise the machete had made when it had hit Benny's neck. He felt the flinch inside and thrust it aside, going to the driver's door and getting into the car. He didn't know how long it would take for Benny to lead Sam and Bobby to the gateway out. But he needed to get going, put his attention on the car and the road and the long drive north. He wasn't planning on stopping.

* * *

_**Amherst, Massachusetts**_

Crowley looked at the demon sitting in the chair thoughtfully.

"So they summoned you, trapped you and tortured you … and you told them how to contact a crow? Does that about cover it?"

The demon nodded reluctantly. "They wanted to get into Hell."

"Yes, so you said," Crowley murmured, walking slowly around his desk. "Did they say why?"

"They asked how to find a soul in Hell."

"A soul? Any particular soul?"

"An innocent soul," the demon said, flicking a brief glance at Crowley.

"And what did you tell them?"

"I told them there were no innocent souls in Hell, sir."

Crowley's eyes narrowed slightly. There were … a few … he thought. But on the top of the Winchesters wish list would be Robert Singer. If they knew about him.

"Did they ask about a soul?"

"No, sir," the demon said, shaking his head. "It was, general, like."

Arjay had taken Singer down from Heaven, Crowley thought, an edge of bitterness lining the thought. He would've told them. But they'd been looking for an innocent soul before that, before they knew about him. Why?

"Arjay's backdoor was via Purgatory, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir." The demon looked at him. "It's a difficult gate, sir."

"Yes," Crowley agreed. He'd only found out about it last year, while he'd been hunting around the back corridors looking for something else. It was a difficult gate. It would only accept humans. Demons and angels and monsters could not pass Go, the damned thing didn't even appear for them. So how … presuming Moose got in and found Singer … would he get them out again?

The knock on the door was soft, yet brisk and he looked past the demon, lifting a brow as Rhonda peered in.

"The Missouri contact has more information, sir," she said flatly.

"Does he now?" Crowley looked at the demon in the chair in front of the desk. "What is it?"

"Dean Winchester just killed a vampire. A vampire that he appeared to be friendly with. He's on his way to Maine. The contact said he was going to the Hundred Mile Wilderness, to be precise."

Dean had gotten out of Purgatory somehow, Crowley mused. A vampire who'd served with him in the foxholes of the land of the monsters, had known of the gate, somehow? It seemed like a possibility. A better possibility than another intervention by God. Castiel had remained behind. It'd taken an angel assault to pull him out. So it seemed unlikely that Dean had had help from that department. And now, he'd sent him back. Vampire didn't need any special passes, he'd go straight there. To guide Sam out.

"Are we tracking the car?" he asked her. She nodded.

"The coin was secreted in the car while the human was sleeping."

"Thank you, Rhonda," he said, gesturing to the door which closed.

"And thank you, Dean. I believe we can do a deal with the Winchesters after all," he said. He got up from behind the desk and looked at the demon. "You, on the other hand, have slipped up rather badly. Our policy is simple. We don't tell anyone our secrets."

The demon exhaled resignedly. Crowley's eyes narrowed and it disappeared. A thousand years in the abyss with the daeva would realign its loyalties.

* * *

_**Purgatory**_

"What happened, Sam?" Bobby asked quietly. They stood, back to back, a few feet from each other, watching the forest.

'I don't know," Sam said slowly. "Not really. Not yet."

"Dean was in here for a year? With a vamp – looking for Cas?" Bobby's voice was tense. "And you couldn't get him out?"

"Yeah," Sam answered. No one would deal with him. No one even saw him after a while. And there'd been a part of him that had been relieved when he'd realised that he would have to mourn his brother because he was gone.

"I gave up," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the other man. "And I ran."

Bobby nodded. That wasn't a surprise. Sam had been doing that for a long time. And, he guessed, it wasn't such a surprise that Dean would look for someone to back him up, someone he could trust. It was a surprise that he'd found a monster capable of doing that.

"And when he got out?"

Sam let out a gusty exhale, his gaze scanning the hundred and eighty degrees of his side of the clearing ceaselessly. He didn't know how to explain that either, he thought. Not dealing. Not acknowledging. Not admitting. All the things he hadn't done.

"He was different. He doesn't talk about what happened here," Sam told him. "I was different too."

Bobby listened as Sam told him about what he'd done, what he'd thought, what he'd thought he'd felt. Normal life. Sam's dream. It'd been just a dream, really. Like the year Dean had spent in Cicero. No one could just go from hunting to normal. No relationship could sustain the lies and omissions that were needed, both for the other person and for oneself.

"And Dean cut himself loose from the vamp, when you didn't go back to Amelia?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

Sam nodded. "Yeah."

He'd told his brother it was one or the other. He couldn't have both. Like a child delivering an ultimatum in the school yard. He didn't even know why he'd done it that way, or felt that way. The emotions that had been churning in him, since Dean had disappeared, since he'd gotten back, none of them made sense now.

Since they'd been kids, dragged around the country, he'd made friends easily and quickly, and Dean had been mistrustful and a loner, most of the time. But he realised, the friends Dean had made, they'd been important to him, and they'd stayed through the years. Not many, not many at all, but necessary. Essential. And Dean had lost them, one by one.

The slur of a foot through the leaf fall snapped both men's attention back to the woods and they stepped backward automatically, closer together. Sam felt the weight of the stone blade in his hand, fingers closing around the half and the muscles in his forearm jumping as the tip lifted.

Shadows moved beneath the trees and Sam stared at them, eyes widening a little as he saw them emerge, two and then five … and then eight. Grey skin, pouched and puckered and the fluttering rags covering them the same dull colour. Deep-set eyes, glittering a little as they roamed avariciously over the two men. Sharpened sticks and thick clubs held in bony hands. Blackened teeth revealed as the lips drew back over them.

"Ghouls?" Bobby whispered behind him and Sam grunted confirmation.

Bobby looked down at the knife in his hand and swallowed. He was going to be hard-pressed to take off many heads with it.

The ghouls shuffled forward, closer, spreading out as they formed a loose circle around the men. Then they attacked.

Sam swung the blade, taking off the first head and ducking under a long arm, feeling the filthy nails scrape along his neck. He reversed the swing and felt the blade bite into something behind him, straightening and turning and pulling it free from the mostly severed neck. Something jumped onto his back, a gust of rotten meat blew along his face and he pitched himself forward, landing on the creature and hearing bones break beneath him. Distantly, he could hear Bobby's harsh panting, and a shout of pain but another ghoul was on him, and he was struggling to keep the point of the stake it held from driving through his eye.

A fierce, low guttural snarl filled the clearing and Sam felt the creature on him plucked away, shrieking as its throat was ripped wide open, the noise ceasing abruptly as the body was cast to one side. He scrambled to his feet, turning to take the head from the ghoul that was fastened to Bobby's shoulder, kicking aside the body and grabbing Bobby's hand. A dark shape moved past, too fast to make out, and another ghoul fell, head attached to the body by a thin flap of skin, dark blood pooling from jaw to collarbone, nothing left in between.

Bobby lifted the knife as the dark shape bent over the last ghoul, and Sam's hand flashed out, gripping the old man's wrist and pulling him back.

"No! Bobby, wait, wait," Sam shouted, dragging his arm down.

Benny lifted his head, spitting out a mouthful of blood and flesh, and turned to look up at them.

"Why are you here?" Sam asked, knowing the answer, feeling it like a avalanche against everything he'd believed for the last year.

"Dean sent me," Benny said, grinning at him, bloodied fangs filling his mouth.

Bobby stared at the vampire. Sam hadn't been kidding, he thought dazedly. There was one way for a vamp to get here. And the creature in front of them had trusted the man enough to let him do it.

Benny got to his feet, looking around the clearing, smiling a little as his teeth retracted. The sense of familiarity was so powerful it almost felt like coming home. He turned and looked at the man and the soul, gesturing to the trail that led to the north – or what would be north if Purgatory had a pole.

"C'mon, Dean's gonna be waiting for us at the other end, and we've got a trek to get to the gateway."

He walked away and Sam looked at Bobby. The older hunter shrugged and started walking after the vampire. Sam looked around and followed him.

How had it been down here, for that much time, really, he wondered? His nerves were crawling with tension and he could feel the adrenalin surges coming and going. Most of the monsters in here couldn't be killed with a simple axe or knife, his brother was resourceful, but … he shook the thought off, hurrying up the trial after them.

* * *

Benny looked at the hills as they came up the ridge and stopped where the trees thinned out. He needed the glass and the bone and the amber, but he had a feeling that they wouldn't be all that difficult to get this time around. If they could get to the compound. Or what was left of it. Glancing at the two beside him, he thought he couldn't let them see everything. Dean hadn't told his brother what had happened down here, he was sure of that. Wouldn't have wanted to. Couldn't have.

He nodded and kept walking, following the tree line around the curve of the hillside. The lamia wouldn't have moved territory. The memory brought a slight smile. They would go around this time. Without the human interference, he thought they could use the dry valley to cross to the other side, get there in half the time. Hell, a quarter of the time since he didn't have Dean agitating about finding the damned angel.

"Did Castiel eventually get out?" he asked Sam, the tall hunter walking beside him.

Sam nodded. "Pulled out by angels, apparently."

"Good. Dean was convinced he was dead," Benny said shortly.

"Are we likely to run into the leviathans?"

Benny tilted his head, looking up at the non-sky overhead. "Hard to say. We saw them but they were after the angel. I'd only seen them distantly before he arrived."

That was something, Sam thought tiredly. "Benny, listen, I know you saved my brother's ass a few times down here, and I respect that –"

Benny turned to look at him. "And now I'm saving yours."

He stopped on the trail, looking at Sam. "I'm a disgrace to my own kind, how 'bout that?"

"Why? Why did you do it?" Sam's brow creased up in bewilderment.

"Dean asked," Benny said, turning away and walking.

Just like that, Sam thought. Dean had asked. And whatever the bond was between the two of them, Benny had trusted him enough, had cared about him enough to say yes. Had he ever commanded a loyalty like that, he wondered? The answer was blindingly obvious and he shook his head, feeling his throat tighten. Of course he had. From Dean.

* * *

_**Heaven**_

Naomi sat behind the glass desk, her eyes closed as she watched. The oldest Winchester was resourceful, she thought remotely. Resourceful and mistrustful and likely to be a problem, when things became more complicated. She could see why Castiel was so dedicated to him, though. He saw problems and solutions in a very straightforward way, breaking them down and dealing with them one by one, as they cropped up. He would never give up Castiel, she knew, not even if he was ambivalent about the angel, not even if he was confused about whether she'd been telling the truth.

She hadn't lied to him about his loyalty. It was admirable and although it was going to be a pain in her ass somewhere down the line, she could see why he'd been chosen, been pulled from Hell. Not just because of the prophecy, but because of who he was.

Crowley was agitating down there as well, knowing that what the Winchesters were doing was portentous, uncertain of how to stop them. It was time he was reminded that Hell existed by God's decree, not the other way around. She sniffed slightly. She still didn't know how the human-born crossroads demon had managed to claim the throne. It was worth investigating.

* * *

_**US-26, Maine**_

The highway travelled north-east, taking Dean back to an interstate that would lead north nearly all the way. The headlights delineated his world, the white lines on the black asphalt and the signs and markers and mileposts going by in a never-ending stream of information he absorbed without thought.

Tiredness came and went in waves. He thought he was on his third or fourth wind now, having pushed through the deep patches of fatigue, ignoring his body's requests for sleep, for rest, telling himself he could rest once Sam and Benny were back up here, safe and the trial was finished.

It hadn't occurred to him until he'd crossed into New York state that Sam might kill Benny down there. The thought had persisted right through the next two hundred miles. He thought that they'd found a way to accept what had happened, thought his brother had understood what the vamp had meant to him. He still wasn't completely sure about it, but he didn't think Sam'd be so stupid as to kill his only way out.

Of course, his brother could be trapped in Hell, or dead down there and then Benny would again be trapped in Purgatory, and he'd be standing in a patch of woods waiting for something that would never happen. He shoved those thoughts aside. Sam would make it out, with Bobby. And Benny could ride out with him. And things would be different when they all got out.

The vampire's face, when he'd been telling him about not fitting, not finding anywhere to fit, rose in his mind and his fingers tightened around the steering wheel. Benny hadn't gone rogue, all those months he'd left him alone. He'd hung on somehow, he told himself fiercely. It wasn't enough that he could do it with someone watching him. He'd had to do it on his own. He hadn't realised how hard it would be for him. Hadn't realised how close Benny had come to wanting to give up.

It would be different now.

In the back of his mind, the part that was pragmatic and practical, that saw problems clearly and came up with solutions to fit them, he wondered if it could be.

* * *

_**Purgatory**_

Bobby's nose wrinkled up as the pungent fumes were carried with the smoke from the bowl into the air. He watched curiously as the vampire picked up the bowl of ash, dropping the fat into it and stirring the resultant thick paste with a finger.

"You remember what I told you?" Benny asked Sam.

Sam nodded, turning to Bobby. "You ready? When we get up top, it's gonna be an express to Heaven – no time for goodbyes," he warned him.

Bobby's mouth quirked. "Already said goodbye to you once. Didn't seem to take."

Sam drew the sigil over his arm, and over Bobby's chest, his face screwing up as he inserted the long sliver of obsidian into both. Red-gold filled Bobby, swirling for a moment then was dragged deep inside Sam's arm, the pain of the transfer drawing a deep groan from between Sam's clenched teeth.

"Your turn, Benny," Sam said, wiping the sweat from his face and turning to the vampire.

"No."

Sam frowned at him. "What do you mean – no?"

"I mean I ain't comin', Sam," Benny said, glancing up at the hills that surrounded them. "I mean that I can't go back."

"What? Why?"

"Because … because there's nothing there for me," the vampire said, shrugging. "Dean wants to be there, but he can't. He's got other things to do. And I can't – I don't – I don't think I can keep holding on up there."

"Benny, Dean needs you," Sam said, stepping toward him. "He needs a friend. Someone he can trust. Someone who's never let him down."

The vampire looked down at the ground. "Dean kept me human, Sam, and down here, maybe I did the same for him." He looked up again. "But up there, he's got you. And sooner or later, I would let him down. Worse than he could imagine. So … no."

The crackling noise came from the edge of the woods and Benny's head snapped around. He hadn't really believed Sam would do it, until that moment, had thought the man might find a way to leave him behind, or kill him. He'd been wrong. Sam was Dean's brother, after all.

"Benny, whatever you think, I can't leave you here," Sam said, his gaze flicking along the edge of the trees. "We'll figure it out when we're home, okay?"

Three figures walked out from under the trees, strolling almost as they came closer. Even from this distance, Sam could smell them, rotten flowers and decomposing meat and he saw their pale, hard skin.

"Benny … where've you been?" the leader said, grinning with a mouthful of glistening, pointed fangs.

Benny looked at them, and back to Sam, mouth lifted to one side. "Time for you to go, Sam."

"Benny –"

"Go on, now, Sam," Benny said, walking away from him, toward the vampires. "Go on."

Sam hesitated, looking at the bowl over the fire. He couldn't leave the vampire here. Dean wouldn't understand.

"Benny – please," he said, looking at the vampire, past him to the others.

"No," Benny said. "You be sure to tell Dean that I said goodbye. I was never any good up there anyway."

"Wait!" Sam grimaced and threw the stone blade to him. The vampire caught it one-handed, turning the catch into a turn, the turn into a swing as the three attacked.

Sam lit the bowl and watched the flames shoot up, changing colour. The slit in the air appeared and widened and he looked back at the vampire, his guttural snarl roaring through the open air, his movements blurred with speed, with economy and efficiency.

In front of him, the slit was wide enough to pass through and Sam swallowed, dragging in a deep breath and launching himself through it.

* * *

_**Hundred Mile Wilderness, Maine**_

Dean walked back and forth through the forest, glancing at his watch. He'd been here an hour and there'd been nothing.

Stop freaking, he told himself, feeling the clamminess of his cooling sweat down his back. It took you months to get out of the place. Give 'em some time.

All good advice, but he couldn't take it. Couldn't stop the feeling that something had gone wrong.

The burst of light filled the tiny clearing and he swung around, seeing Sam's unmistakable silhouette climbing out of it, his brother staggering and stumbling through the deadfalls that littered the space under the trees as the light died behind him.

For a heartbeat, he wasn't sure it was Sam and he waited, his pulse hammering against his ribs, all the fear he'd held back for the last forty hours coursing through him. Then he heard Sam's panting breath, saw his face in the thin moonlight and he stepped forward, pulling his brother close and holding him tightly. It was okay. It was going to be okay. The thought drummed through his head over and over and he finally felt it might be true.

He let him go, stepping back to look at him. In Sam's eyes, a lot had changed, he thought.

"Purgatory, right?" Dean said, forcing down the mass of feeling. "Real garden spot, ain't it?"

"Yeah," Sam said. He didn't know what to say to Dean. Didn't know where to start.

"Did you get them out?"

"Only Bobby," Sam said, his face crumpling a little as he looked at Dean.

"What?" Dean stared at him, trying to get his head around what Sam had said, trying not to think that Benny hadn't made it. "I mean, that's fantastic about Bobby –"

"Dean … uh, Benny … he got us out," Sam said slowly. "A bunch of vamps showed and he – he used himself as bait."

Of course, naturally, Dean thought. Because he'd asked him to save Sam. And save Sam was exactly what Benny would do.

"He told me that he didn't – he didn't want to come back. Said that no matter what happened, he couldn't fit here. He said to tell you goodbye." Sam continued. He saw his brother's face close up, saw him pull back, somewhere inside. "I'm sorry."

He hadn't, Dean thought, hadn't wanted to come back. Not enough to want to try it again. See if they could figure out a way to make it work up here. It was simple down there. Simple and pure. Kill or be killed. No shades of grey. No wanting things you couldn't ever have. He swallowed his grief and shoved the thoughts away, looking back up at Sam.

"Right." He pulled in a breath, forcing himself to think of what else, what next. "So … uh Bobby, how'd he hold up down there?"

Sam watched the transition, knowing now what was going on behind the tension in Dean's face, knowing that this was another wound, something else that wouldn't heal up and leave Dean alone, knowing that his brother couldn't or wouldn't talk about it, not now. Probably not ever.

He nodded. "He's good, all things considered. Ornery as hell, of course."

"As he should be," Dean said, getting a little further from the pain. "Let's put that old man where he belongs."

"Yeah," Sam said, tucking his knife under his arm as he pulled up his sleeve.

Dean looked down at the glowing light that lay beneath Sam's forearm. Carrying souls around was getting to be old hat, he thought irrelevantly.

The knife sliced through his brother's skin and Sam murmured the words of the spell of release. The soul burst free of the flesh, changing from red-gold to blue-white at the moment it rose.

_How can we see it_, Dean wondered as he watched it rise through the canopy of bare branches. _How the hell can we see the things we see?_

The light stopped at the top of the trees, disappearing in a thick, dark cloud above them.

"What the hell –?" Dean stared up.

"Moose and Squirrel, what a coincidence," Crowley's voice came from behind them.

They turned to see him standing at the edge of the clearing. "Bobby Singer," Crowley said smugly, looking up at the soul trapped within the charcoal coils of his demons. "I'd know you anywhere."

"Let him go, Crowley," Dean said, his face stony. "He doesn't belong in Hell!"

Crowley looked at him, smiling. "Ah but we all know that doesn't mean much, don't we, boys? Those angels you're so fond of don't seem mind a little horse-trading, when it suits them."

He sensed their intentions as their bodies tensed. "Really?"

The gesture was small, the movement it directed not so much. Dean and Sam were lifted and slammed into tree trunks, pinned off the ground, held immobile, their bones creaking as the demon increased the pressure.

Crowley looked up and the soul was brought down. Then it stopped. He frowned at it, and dropped his gaze, seeing Naomi standing on the other side of the clearing, smiling a little at him.

"Oh, come on!" he growled at her.

"Let me see if I've interpreted this situation correctly," she said, the smile disappearing. "The Winchesters have freed an innocent soul from Hell, to which you are wrongfully trying to return it."

Crowley scowled at her. "Siding with them now, Naomi? You don't know those two. Before they're done, we'll both be locked away."

"I'm just looking forward to them locking you away, dear," she said lightly.

"Bureaucrat!" he spat at her. "You're fighting outside your weight class."

Naomi's face froze at the insult, the muscle in the point of her vessel's jaw twitching.

"You forget yourself, demon" she ground out, lifting her hand toward him as her vessel filled with light. Crowley vanished and the light faded away as Dean and Sam fell to the ground.

She looked up, the demons trapping the soul moving around panic-stricken in twisting spirals as she lifted her hand. Naomi pointed at them and they vanished entirely, the soul of Bobby Singer rising quickly, unimpeded now, into the sky.

She dropped her gaze, turning to look at the two men. "I told you could trust me," she said.

Dean shook his head as the clearing filled with restless sound of beating wings and returned to silence. He couldn't. He never would. Heaven wanted the hell gates closed. Didn't mean they were on the same side.

He looked at his brother. Sam was staring back at him. "What the hell was that about?"

"I'll tell you later, let's get this trial done," Dean said.

Sam nodded, pulling the spell from his pocket and dragging in a deep breath before he started to read it.

"Ga na haam dar."

The pain struck immediately this time, white-hot knives stabbing into his muscles, into his joints, from elbow to fingertips. His hand sprang open and the spell paper fluttered to the ground as he doubled over and dropped to his knees.

_What the –?_ Dean stepped close to him, watching Sam's hand shaking, shudders rippling fast through his brother's frame.

"Sam?" He leaned close, his hand closing over Sam's shoulder and gripping tight. "Sam! Talk to me! What?"

Sam's hand was rigid, fingers bent and curled. He couldn't see why. Couldn't see anything causing it. This had happened the last time, he thought wildly.

"It's okay, it's okay," Sam gasped out, holding his forearm against the agonising burning inside of his hand. He could see the light in it, could see the bones and tendons standing out, silhouetted against it. It wasn't going, he thought, his eyes screwing shut. It wasn't fading.

Then it did. He flexed his fingers, letting out the breath he'd been holding in a series of sharp moans, the light dying away and the pain disappearing until he couldn't even remember how it'd felt. He ducked his head, feeling the skin return to normal, his hand working properly now, the sweat dripping off his face onto his arm.

"It's okay," he said, looking at Dean's drawn face and away. "I'm fine. It's done."

Dean stared down at him. _Not fucking okay, and certainly not fucking fine_, he thought, his heart rate settling as Sam's voice returned to its usual timbre.

"It's done," Sam said reassuringly, glancing up at him, feeling his pulse slow, the final faint tingling in his nerves dissipate and disappear.

"What happened?" Dean said.

"I don't know what it is," Sam said, looking down at his arm. "Some kind of … confirmation, maybe? That the spell worked? That the trial was done properly?" He shook his head. "It's a – there's a light, I can see it. And a lot of pain. Then it goes."

"I didn't see a light, Sam," Dean said, his voice deep, worried. "Why didn't you tell me about this, the first time?"

"Because I didn't know what it was then either, Dean," Sam said, shifting his weight to his foot and getting up. "Where the –"

He saw the paper, lying trapped against a branch on the ground a few feet away. Walking away, he bent and picked it up, tucking it back into his jacket.

"It doesn't last long," he said, turning around. "And it doesn't seem to do anything permanent."

Dean's mouth twisted. "Oh … so you were coughing up blood before you completed the first trial?"

Sam dropped his gaze. "I don't know what that is either," he said quietly.

"There's a shitload we don't know, Sam." Dean looked away. "Maybe we better figure some of it out before it kills you."

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

Kevin leaned over the sink, painting the last of the symbols over the glass of the windows. He'd found the wards on the tablet, protection against the ruler of Hell.

_So tired of this, aren't you, Kevin? The fear. The hiding. The wondering if you're finally losing your mind?_

He snapped upright, the brush falling from nerveless fingers into the sink.

"Just a dream," he muttered to himself, looking uneasily around the dim cabin. The lights were off, he was using candles to enhance the warding spell. The pills had stopped Crowley's voice. It meant … it meant that it had to have just been a dream. Couldn't be real. Couldn't be Crowley. "Just … a dream."

Behind him the symbols flickered, lighting up and fading away, each burst of light making them thinner, more translucent. Kevin spun around, his eyes widening as he watched them begin to disappear. He could hear something, something deeper, something higher, a wailing and moaning that seemed to be coming from everywhere.

_The souls of Hell are a power source, Kevin … torture, the old-fashioned way, that releases the power … and the power is infinite …_

The thick glass fractured, cracks running across, down, more and more of them as the glass seemed to flutter with the frequency of the voices. He dropped, spinning away as they shattered, the shards blowing inwards, the voices suddenly much louder.

"No! No, this is just a dream!" Kevin screamed as he crawled away to the far side of the cabin.

A tearing, shrieking noise came from the hull, from the decks and cabin top. He looked up and saw the metal torn apart, through the devil's trap and the sigils painted there, lifted by a monstrous force he couldn't see. Everywhere he looked, the metal vessel was being ripped, the high-pitched, torturous whining of the stressed steel drilling into his ears, into his mind.

It stopped and the silence rang in his ears. The candles blew out, all together, the wind sweeping through the cabin and vanishing. He looked up slowly, unwillingly, and saw Crowley standing beside the companionway, hands in his pockets.

"Kevin Tran," the demon said with a small sigh. "It's been quite a while. Can't say that you're looking good, Kev, because frankly, you look like hell."

Kevin stared at him hopelessly. If this wasn't a dream, he was going to die. He wasn't sure that it wouldn't be a relief.

"How did you find me?"

"There's always a way," Crowley said, lifting his hand and examining his fingernails. "If you can't find one Tran … you find another."

_Death would've been easy_, Kevin thought as the words registered. _Nothing was ever that easy_.

"Your mother, Kev," Crowley said, his expression transforming into one of compassion. "Quite a pain threshold, that one. She didn't want to give you up, of course, but even she could only take … so much."

"She never would've told you," Kevin said, feeling his chest rising and falling faster as he began to hyperventilate.

Crowley shrugged. "No, you're quite right. She didn't. We killed her and got your address off her Smartphone."

"NO!" Kevin screamed at him, backing blindly away, feeling the sharp stab of twisted metal behind him.

Waiting for the boy's breath to run out, Crowley stared around the cabin.

"All done?" the demon asked politely when the scream had trailed away to nothing. "People come and go, Kevin. Most of them unnoticed. You, on the other hand, well, you were responsible for saving the world, that's something. Cheer up, mate, at least I want you alive."

"I'll NEVER help you!"

"Ah … well, never's a long time, isn't it?" Crowley said thoughtfully. "And we both know that your pain threshold, well, nowhere near your lately-departed mother's. So … let's talk about what you've been feeding to the Winchesters, shall we?"

* * *

_**I-70 W, Indiana**_

Dean rubbed a hand over his forehead. He was just about on empty, but they had to get back to Missouri. He'd stop soon, he told himself. _Soon_. Everything that had happened. It was too much, he knew. Too much to think about right now. Too much to deal with. He'd need time for it. Time to get it straight.

Sam hadn't spoken for the last three hours, falling asleep for the first seven. He glanced at him.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'll live."

Dean chewed on the corner of his lip for a moment, not sure if he should raise the subject or not. He'd promised Sam he'd be honest with him. He guessed this fell into that category.

"I buried Benny," he said abruptly, staring ahead. "But I didn't burn his bones."

Sam turned his head to look at him, surprised by the admission. Surprised Dean was telling him.

"I know you got no use for him, but –"

"No, no, no. You know what, I get it," Sam interrupted quickly. "I do. He's … uh … he's different from what I thought. And … I'm sorry. Sorry I didn't trust you on that. Sorry I didn't want to listen."

The silence stretched out between them, both lost in their thoughts. Dean was surprised, surprised that Sam had seen what he'd seen, more surprised at the admission that he'd been wrong.

He pulled in a breath. "Alright, let's go see prophet-boy and find out where he's stashed that tablet," he said decisively. He would need a lot of time to work through what had happened. And they didn't have that time now.

Sam nodded.

* * *

_**Warsaw, Missouri**_

The boat, _Fizzle's Folly_, lay quietly against the dock. No lights showed in the cabins and neither man could hear anything other than the very soft lap of the water against the sides.

Dean looked over the sigils, the traps and wards and guards as they climbed on board, moving together to the forward hatch and going below. Everything looked intact. He wondered if Kevin was actually getting some sleep for a change.

"Kevin? It's us," he said, opening the door to the main cabin and stepping through. The place was dark, and he pulled out his flashlight, flicking it on and shining the beam around the room. Something was different, he thought, the nerves prickling up the back of his neck. "Kevin!"

He found the power switch and flipped it on, turning slowly around and looking at the bare, clean, empty cabin.

"He's gone," Sam said, walking from Garth's cabin back into the main room.

Dean looked at the dishes, neatly stacked in the drainer. At the clean counters and tidy shelves and the stripped bunk in the aft cabin. There wasn't a shred of paper anywhere to be seen. Every sigil, symbol, trap and guard was in place. Nothing was disturbed.

"He took all his stuff – his notes, the books –" Sam said, turning around and looking at the room.

"Well, we saw this coming," Dean said quietly. "Finally freaked. Little geek made a run for it."

Sam's brow creased up. "Yeah, but where?"

Dean looked at him. "And that's the sixty-four dollar question."


	40. Chapter 40 Process of Elimination

**Chapter 40 Process of Elimination**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam stared at the pages of the book in front of him. The words were blurring, shifting slightly from side to side. He felt the growing pressure again, and flicked a glance at his brother, lifting his hands and running them up over his face and hair to hide the need to press hard against his sinus. When he looked back at Dean, he saw that the subterfuge hadn't worked. Dean's gaze was on him, dark green eyes watching him thoughtfully.

"Pain again?"

Sam nodded reluctantly. "It comes and goes."

"Reading won't help that," Dean said mildly, pushing the book he'd been looking through aside as he looked at his watch. "You need something to eat, take those pills with."

"Dean, I'm okay –"

"Spaghetti okay with you? There's leftover sauce," Dean cut him off, getting up and walking toward the rear hall.

"Yeah, that's …" Sam trailed off as he watched him go out of the library.

For the past two weeks, Dean had barely spoken. He'd spent a lot of time on the lower levels of the library, in the apothecary or in the weapons store, or on the twenty-five yard range, appearing for meals at random times.

Losing Benny had been something he'd known would affect his brother, but he hadn't realised until they'd gotten back exactly how. Sam thought that Dean had become more or less hardened to losing people. He hadn't even spoken of Rufus or Bobby in the last nine months. Hadn't talked of Ellen or Jo for two years now, since Dearborn. And that hadn't been talking about them, really.

For a long time, he thought that his brother never mentioned the people they'd lost because he'd grieved and moved on. It'd occurred to him after the spectre case, that maybe he hadn't. Hadn't grieved. Hadn't moved on. Hadn't begun to let go. He didn't know why. And he couldn't get Dean to talk about it. At all.

Maybe that's why he commands the loyalty he does, he thought now. Because that's what he gives. Loyalty and love beyond death. He thought of the moment he'd lost that loyalty and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He hadn't seen it as a precious gift until it'd been gone and he didn't think he was ever going to get it back. Too many breaks, too many hurts between them now.

Closing the book, he got up from the table and swayed as the room spun around him. He closed his eyes tightly and gripped the back of the chair, willing it stop. It did, after a few moments. His stomach was roiling and he wasn't sure he was going to be able to keep down the food that Dean was making. Not eating would make Dean's radar sharpen on him even more. He'd have to try, even if he lost it later.

The sensation of dizziness passed and he opened his eyes, relieved to see the room still and steady again. Maybe Dean was right, he thought. Food, a couple of painkillers, some sleep … the hour or two he could usually get would help … and not thinking about Kevin or Benny or anything for as long as he could manage it.

* * *

Dean watched Sam eating, every forkful lifted slowly and deliberately, every mouthful chewed thoroughly before swallowing. _Nauseous_, he thought to himself. Another blackout or a dizzy spell … something had happened while he'd been in kitchen.

The coughing was back too. He'd heard Sam in the middle of the night, hacking for minutes after he'd woken, like some four-pack-a-day on the way out. Sam didn't mention it and he hadn't raised it either, waiting for his brother to admit that his worsening condition was scaring the hell out of him.

He felt a flash of guilt that he hadn't been paying that much attention to Sam the last couple of weeks, thinking that it would improve with rest, with staying here and researching and eating and sleeping. Not that Sam was eating and sleeping much.

"You want to see a doc?" he asked, as Sam looked down at his plate and exhaled audibly.

"No," Sam said quickly, looking up at him. "No, I'm – I just need to get some rest. You're right, probably overloading everything and that's what's causing the headaches."

Dean made a non-committal noise in his throat as he looked down at his plate. "Might be a good idea to get some tests done."

He glanced up at the silence that answered that remark. Sam was looking at him, his face expressionless.

"They wouldn't find anything," Sam said quietly. "And you know that."

He shrugged. "Couldn't hurt to look."

"They'd keep me in there, running more and more tests while Kevin figures out how to really bury himself."

That was probably true, Dean admitted unwillingly to himself. "Just a thought."

"Yeah, well, thanks, but it'll come good with some rest," Sam said, twirling his fork around another knot of pasta and lifting it.

Dean bit back the comment that came to mind and nodded. Maybe. It'd been two weeks and Sam wasn't improving. In fact, he thought he was getting worse. The disorientation and dizziness had started a few days after they'd gotten back. He'd watched his brother walk into one of the stacks, misjudging the aisle width. _But yeah, maybe another nap would do the trick_.

He watched Sam swallow the pills and wash them down with a glass of water.

"I'll lie down for a while," Sam said, getting to his feet. "Wake me if you find anything." He gestured down at the banks of computers in the war room. They'd set up a dozen bots to search the security cameras of every location they could think of that Kevin might go near. Using a version of facial recognition software, the bots scanned the images, reporting on matches to eighty-five percent. The printouts were accumulating in the printer bins but so far, there'd been nothing even close.

"I will," Dean agreed readily. He wouldn't, of course. But Sam didn't need to know that.

There wasn't a lot else they could do, he thought. Kevin had been impossible to find the last time, sending them criss-crossing the country trailing credit card leads that had been bogus. He needed to think more like the little geek, less like a hunter.

_Stay away from us. I won't let you use her, won't let you use us like the others. We're not expendable just because you think we've stopped being of use._

The fragment of Kevin's note rose in his mind and he flinched inwardly at the memory of it. He'd never blamed Kevin for it, that open knife wound that wouldn't close, wouldn't heal. Every single time he thought of anyone he'd lost, it came back to him. The accusation had been just. Every one of them had been sacrificed to the greater good and he'd led them to those deaths, pretending to himself that he couldn't see the risk, needing them. Needing their help.

* * *

"_Their deaths aren't on you, cher," Benny said, staring at him in perplexion. "They chose to help, didn't they?"_

"_They'd be alive if I hadn't asked."_

"_Doesn't make it your fault, Dean," the vampire had said, shaking his head. "No one had their arms twisted."_

_He'd stared at the small fire, unwilling to argue it further and had heard Benny's deep sigh from the other side._

"_You're a strange bird, you know that," Benny had said softly. "You take responsibilities that aren't yours to take, wallow in the guilt like it was some kind of bath … you gotta let them go, Dean."_

_He'd looked up then, across the flames, seeing the deep compassion on his friend's face. "I can't."_

"_Why not?"_

"_Because …" he'd stopped, his gaze dropping to the fire, unable to explain that. Unable to articulate it at all, not even to himself._

"_Because you feel like if you let them go, then their sacrifices will have been for nothing, unremembered, unsung?"_

_That was it, he'd realised. That was the reason. If he didn't remember their pain, no one would. And if he didn't pay for it, somehow, then their lives had been lost for nothing._

"_I understand that, cher," Benny had said, very gently. "But it's not true. What they did, what they gave up, it's seen and remembered. You don't have to be the guardian of those memories."_

_But he was. And he did._

He woke, chin slipping from the slope of his palm, the feeling of falling snapping him back to consciousness. He looked around the silent library in bleary-eyed confusion as the dream, the memory, slipped away from him.

It'd been the first time he'd understood some of what drove him. Some of what he needed. And it'd been the vampire who'd seen it, who'd spelled it out for him. He shook his head slightly, pushing back at the memories of that friendship, pushing back at the pain that was tightening his chest. Like everything else, everyone else, it was gone and he wasn't sure if he should even be thinking of trying to get it back. Benny had been drowning up here. He'd told Sam he was better down there. For awhile, Dean thought, for a while it would be better, no decisions but the simple ones. But not forever.

He looked at his watch. Four forty-five. Sam had been sleeping for more than four hours, which had to be a record since the first trial. He got to his feet, stretching the stiffness out of his neck and back and walked down to the war room to check on the printers. The bins were full. Matching Asian features to eighty-five percent was a big ask.

Sighing, he pulled out an armful and took them to the map table, leaning over them as he started to leaf through.

* * *

_**2.45 pm. Next day.**_

The Impala's deep rumble was muffled by the woods, both real and illusory as he pulled in through the grey mist that filled the hollow, stopping a little past the utility hut.

They'd fooled around with testing the parameters of the illusions, both becoming disoriented and completely lost on one occasion, discovering that even thirty yards down the narrow lane, everything was hidden, the car, the hut, even the hillside that looked real but wasn't. From the end of the lane, where the asphalt met the road into Lebanon, the lane looked like nothing more than a short stub of road, the first gentle bend hidden by the spell's forest. It was an additional security that kept the hardest of targets – the unaware lost and the cheerful-walk-in-the-woods trespassers from penetrating too close.

Pulling out the bags of groceries and the six pack, he locked the car and walked to the hut, the mist and forest disappearing as the iron key slid into the lock. He barely noticed the transition anymore, pushing open the door and pulling out the key as the locking rings clunked in succession when he closed it behind him. Should've kept Kevin here, he thought for the five-hundredth time. It hadn't seemed like a good idea at the time, but he couldn't remember why now.

The laptop was open on the table as he'd left it, and he looked at the screen as he put the beers on the table, dropped the bags on a chair and pulled off his jacket, pulling out the chair and dropping into it. The security footage showed intersections in a half-dozen towns where the credit card trail had hinted at Kevin's presence. It was a damned sight easier than driving around.

He reached for a beer and twisted the top off as he looked at the screen, wondering if there was a way to track the kid through the data he'd been busy setting up. They needed an expert. The only expert they'd known had disappeared and was presumed dead. At least Frank had been involved for the cash, not out of any altruistic attempt to help them.

The noise from the hall pulled his attention from the footage and he watched Sam stumble out, hair flopping over half his face, his eyes still mostly shut.

"I'm telling you, give me five minutes with some clippers and –"

"Ah, shut up," Sam cut him off as he ran his hands over his face and pushed back the hair. He wasn't up for another conversation about his goddamned hair. "Uh … what time did I lay down?"

Dean looked at his watch. "You took a siesta around noon … yesterday," he said, smiling as he pulled another beer from the pack and pitched it gently toward his brother.

The bottle arced past Sam and smashed on the war room floor, Sam's head turning belatedly at the crash.

Dean looked down at the laptop. _Well, could've timed that reaction with a calendar_, he thought disparagingly.

Sam looked back at him, swaying a little on his feet. "I'm sorry … I … uh …"

"You okay?" Dean frowned as Sam's weight shifted back and forth unsteadily.

Sam looked at him, taking a step toward the table. "Yeah, I'm fine, I just –" He stopped, lifting his hand to his left eye as the pain lanced through his skull and he reached out to lean on the table.

Dean watched him straighten up, and take a fast step backward, his face screwed up.

"You know what," Sam said, half-turning. "I'm gonna get dressed, we should go find Kevin."

"Hey," Dean shoved his chair back, getting up and striding around the end of the table as Sam pivoted aimlessly again. "Easy, okay? Just take it easy."

Closer, Sam looked like all kinds of hell, he thought. Aside from the hair and the stubble that shadowed his face, he was too thin, his eyes were pouched and bloodshot and half-closed, his skin had an underlying grey tinge to it that Dean didn't like at all.

"We're doing everything we can, Sammy," he said, stopping in front of him. "You know that."

"Dean … we have to find him," Sam said, his eyes losing focus for a second. Dean was reminded uncomfortably of the way Kevin had looked, had been looking, struggling to decipher the tablet.

"I know. I know … Garth is out looking, and he's put a hunter APB out for Kevin," Dean said calmly. "We will do what we can – from here, while you get better, okay?"

Sam's face scrunched up disbelievingly. "I'm fine. Dean, I can still go out there – I can still hunt!"

Dean smiled at him. "Really?"

"Yes. Really," Sam said uneasily, not liking the smile.

"So you won't mind putting my concerns to rest?"

"Of course not," he said uncomfortably, slowly realising that he might not be keeping up with his brother all that well, the grogginess of the long stretch of sleep still with him. "Whatever you need."

"Great," Dean said, turning. "Come on."

"Dean, is this really necessary?" Sam trailed after him, his confidence dropping as they went down the stairs and Dean turned into the doorway for the pistol range.

Dean flipped on the lights, the caged overheads coming on in pairs down the length of the range, paper targets at the far end. He pulled a pair of ear protectors from the hook and passed them to his brother and reached around to the next bay for a pair for himself, putting them on as he pulled out his Colt. Clearing the chamber and ejecting the magazine to check the number of rounds, he slammed it back in and racked the slide.

"This is stupid," Sam muttered, seeing exactly how his brother had trapped him.

"What? Can't hear you," Dean said, tapping the protectors with a faint smile.

Raising the gun, he fired twice, both bullets hitting the target in the chest.

Sam flinched at the retort and echo of the gun in the small space, even through the protection, feeling the slicing pain in his head again. Sometimes it felt like migraine. At others it felt like a regular headache. Or sinus. Or a brain tumour. He didn't know what it was. He didn't particularly want to find out.

"Alright, you hit the target in that bunch – you're back out there," Dean said, handing him the Colt.

Sam took the gun, mouth twisting. "No problem."

Dean watched as he raised the gun, one-handed, the way he usually shot. He saw the tremors that ran along Sam's forearm and through his wrist and hand, saw Sam lift his other hand to steady the gun, twisting his body into a modified Weaver stance, one shoulder back as he tried to force himself to stillness. Sam squeezed the trigger and the first bullet hit the cinderblock wall to the right of the target. The next one was wide to the left, kicking out a spurt of dust as it drilled into the concrete brick.

Dean folded his arms over his chest, looking down at the floor, chewing the corner of his lip as he waited for Sam to accept it. Next to him, Sam stared at the holes. He hadn't had the slightest bit of control over his hands – or his wrists or arms, for that matter. It wasn't just the pain, lurking around in his head, in his lungs and along the nerves of his right arm. He'd lost strength. The weight of the gun, that had once been negligible, the recoil … he hadn't had the strength to hold it steady. He put the gun on the counter and leaned against the edge, his disappointment audible in his breathy exhale.

"Look, man," Dean said quietly. "This second trial hit you a lot harder than the first one. I don't know whether it was just more intense, or what –"

"Felt the same," Sam said quickly, then looked down. "Till the next day," he added unwillingly, remembering the exhaustion that had crashed into him as they'd driven back.

"So," Dean said, looking at him. "We're gonna sit tight. Keep an eye out." He picked up the empty casing, ejected from the port on the last shot and lying on the counter. "Until you get better," he finished, tossing the casing into the pit as he turned and walked for the door.

Sam looked down at the counter surface. He couldn't argue. He wasn't doing anything and there was fine tremble through his arms, from the shoulder to the knuckles. He straightened up slowly, clearing the chamber and putting the safety on Dean's gun automatically as he turned around.

And what if he didn't get better? The thought, not a new one, stole in. What if he never got better, only worse? How the hell were they supposed to find Kevin and finish the trials if that happened?

He shook his head, slapping the lightswitch by the door as he walked through. He was going to have to keep going, whether he was better or not. Because waiting – especially waiting for something that might not happen – was no longer an option.

* * *

A low bell tone rang in the quiet library and Sam walked to the laptop, bringing up the email client, brows lifting as he saw the sender.

"It's from Charlie," he said to his brother, looking across the room at him. He sat down and opened it, reading it out.

"In the neighbourhood, found you guys a case." Sam looked up. "Found us a case?"

"In the neighbourhood? How the hell does she know where we are?" Dean frowned over the more pertinent question.

"Well, she doesn't, not exactly, at least," Sam said, looking at the email. "She says she tracked our cells to a twenty mile radius then the signal went out." Sam flicked a glance at his brother as the implications of that sank in.

"Huh … this place must be shielded somehow," he said slowly, looking around. "Signal in but not out. At least not the location data. Now how did they get around that before –?"

"You saying that we can make and receive phone calls from here and no one can track us?" Dean asked incredulously, looking around the room and back to his brother.

Sam snorted softly. "Yeah, I don't know how but if she couldn't get a fix better than twenty miles –"

"Man, I love this place," Dean grinned. It was the best news he'd had all week. For a month. Maybe longer.

"Yeah, but it's not that simple –"

"Dude, stop the nitpicking!"

"Okay, it's a gift, but –"

"Nuh! Seriously, we're not looking in the mouth." He gestured to the laptop. "Tell her we'll meet her on the train access road, down by the bridge."

Sam shrugged inwardly as he typed the response. Charlie was resourceful and highly skilled. If this place had managed to trump her skills at finding exact locations then it had to be thoroughly shielded. He'd heard of it before, of course. Rooms without doors. Very big in science fiction.

Dean finished his beer and walked down to the war room, dumping the empty bottle and snagging his jacket from the newel post as he headed up the stairs. Retrospectively, he was beginning to like the men who'd set this place up more and more.

* * *

The car was small, nondescript and had something wrong with the timing, Dean thought as it trundled toward them from the town end of the road.

Charlie stopped and turned off the engine, getting out as Dean called out.

"Your Highness."

She smiled, closing the door and looking from him to Sam. "What's up, bitches?"

They looked tired. It was the first thought that came to her as she got closer. Dean just looked tired. Sam … Sam looked a lot worse than tired. Exhausted covered it better. Or devastated. Or wrecked even.

"You okay, Sam?" she asked immediately.

"Yeah, no, I'm good," Sam stumbled over the words, her instant and accurate appraisal throwing him. "What are you doing in Kansas?"

"Uh …" She glanced back at her car. "Comic convention. In Topeka."

Dean's eyes narrowed slightly at the obvious lie. He couldn't think of a reason why she would lie to them, but he let it go, unwilling to call her on it when there might've been a perfectly reasonable explanation. With Charlie, it was possible that she had a personal reason, and the last thing he wanted to know more of was her personal life.

Sam frowned. "What? In the middle of the week?"

"Girl's gotta get her collectibles," Charlie stated as if it were obvious. "So … are you gonna invite me into your dungeon, or do I have answer your questions three, first?"

"Uh … yeah," Sam said, glancing at his brother.

"Leave your ride here, Charlie," Dean said, straightening off the hood of the Impala. "It's easier to show you."

Charlie looked at him, one brow raised. "So it's a real hideout?"

The corner of Dean's mouth lifted on one side as he walked around to the driver's side. "Yeah, you have no idea."

"Can I ride in the front?"

"No," Sam and Dean said together. Sam looked down at his feet as he saw her expression.

"Uh … back's too small for me," he added apologetically.

She shrugged and followed him to the car, opening the rear door and getting in behind Dean.

"So is it far?"

"You'll see."

"C'mon, really, it's gotta be pretty close, right?" she pressed, as Dean reversed back down the access road to the turnaround.

"Think we should've made her ride in the trunk?" Dean muttered under his breath.

* * *

"Dean! Look out!" Charlie squeaked from the back seat as he drove into what seemed to be a straight line of trees. She sucked in a breath when the trees flickered and faded as they passed through them, her eyes widening further as the mist started to gather around the car. "Can you see where you're going?"

"I know where I'm going," he said dryly, slowing to a stop just past the utility hut.

Charlie looked around, her gaze passing over the hut twice before she reluctantly admitted to herself that it was the only thing here. "Is that it?"

Sam laughed as he got out. "It's good, isn't it?"

Charlie looked around doubtfully. "It's creepy."

Dean walked down the stairs to the hut and inserted the key. Charlie blinked as the forest and the mist and hut vanished, seeing Dean standing in front of a broad round doorway set into the hill.

"Hobbit house?" she murmured to herself as she followed Sam down the stairs.

She walked in the through the door, jumping as Dean closed it and the clunking of the rings thudded behind her.

"The hidden stronghold of the Litteris Hominae," Sam said, sweeping his arm out across the gallery rail. "C'mon, I'll you the full tour."

Dean walked down the stairs behind them. "Maybe Charlie'd like a beer before the five mile trek, Sam?"

Sam looked back at him, brow creasing as he saw the warning in his brother's eyes. "Uh, sure … Charlie?"

"Yeah, whatever," Charlie said absently, staring around the war room. "Oh Sam, you gotta upgrade these, you can get much faster now. Wow."

She followed Sam up the stairs to the library, turning around and staring at the towering shelves, the polished tables, comfortable armchairs and wide hearth.

"Damn, you guys have really been holding out on me," she breathed. Sam grinned and gestured to the table.

"Have a seat."

"Holy cow," she said, sitting down. "How big is this place?"

"Five levels below us, two more above," Sam said, handing her a beer.

"All books?" she asked disbelievingly.

"Books, artefacts, supplies, weapons, training rooms, generator floor, bedrooms … the top floor is climatically controlled, holds the oldest texts."

"And this is yours … how exactly?" She looked at Dean then back to Sam.

"That is a long story, Charlie," Dean said quellingly. "What about you?"

She looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Uh … made a deal with the Yesteryear weirdos," she said brightly. "We're gonna team up to stomp the Shadow Orcs." She looked at Dean. "You guys are still coming to the mid-year Jubilee, right?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Dean said, not bothering to explain that if they weren't there, it would be because they were dead. She'd been around them long enough to know that was a given.

"So, what about this case you found?" Sam asked her.

"Oh." Pulling out a tablet, she set it on the table. "When I was in Topeka, I saw this pop up over the wire. Tom Blake," she read from the file on the tablet. "A checkout clerk in Salina, who went missing on his way home from work. He was found dead yesterday, not such a big surprise, right?" She looked at Sam. "His insides were liquefied. Much more interesting."

Sam's brows rose slightly as he checked his mental files for internal liquefaction. Only Cas sprang to mind.

"Locals have no idea what happened. They tried to bury the report so that people wouldn't freak but I flagged it," she continued. "I have eliminated the following things that go bump in the night –"

"Wait a second," Sam interrupted, staring at her. "When did you become such an expert?"

"Well … after you guys left, I dug into all things monsters," she said, glancing between them.

Dean felt his heart sink. He really didn't want yet another well-meaning but inexperienced person out there, throwing themselves in harm's way.

"Charlie –"

"I'm a wee bit obsessive," she said, cutting him off. "If 'wee bit' means 'completely'."

"There's not much real information online, Charlie," Sam said, flicking a glance at Dean. He could see that Dean was gearing up for a long and pointed lecture on the pitfalls, dangers and disasters of the hunting life.

"I also found this series of books," Charlie said slowly, looking at Sam from under her ember-bright bangs. "By Carver Edlund."

The atmosphere in the room changed in that instant. Sam looked at Dean, his expression hardening and Dean's gaze dropped to the table, the lecture forgotten as they both realised that Charlie knew more about them now than anyone else. _Anyone other than a true fan_, Dean guessed sourly, his stomach churning.

"Did those books really … happen?" she asked tentatively. _Guess they really did_, she thought, seeing the stoniness of Sam's face, the jaw-clenching discomfort on his older brother's.

"Wow," she said softly. "I … uh … don't know what to say to that. I mean, I thought they must've been pretty close, because well, it's you guys, you know, and he had you down. But … um … thanks for saving the world, by the way," she said to Dean.

Dean closed his eyes. He wanted her to stop talking. In fact, if she could've stopped five minutes ago, that would've been ideal. Everything was in those books. Well, not everything – Sam's drinking demon blood hadn't been in them, but fuck, everything else. He could feel himself going foetal, at least on the inside, with the thought of it.

"And uh, sorry you have zero luck with the ladies," Charlie said to Sam, oblivious to the desolation she was creating.

"Wha –?" Sam started to protest and looked across the table at Dean as what she'd said sank in. "Wait, Charlie – how did you know about the Apocalypse?"

"It's the last book," Charlie said, looking at him. "You can't hold Lucifer, and Dean goes to Stull Cemetery, and then you get hold of him, and jump in the hole. And Dean drives to Indiana."

"What?!" Dean stared at her. "No. No, those books, they finished, they, uh, finished –"

"When you went to Hell," Sam supplied, turning to look back at Charlie.

"No, the publisher did a new run for at least another forty books, maybe more," she said, shaking her head as she looked at Dean. "You get out of Hell, the angels plotted with demons to raise Lucifer – and I liked Anna, by the way," she asided to Dean. "Um … Sam kills Lilith and breaks the last seal on the cage … God saves you and then – well," she laughed a little self-consciously. "You lived it, but the last book was the prize fight that didn't happen."

"We need to find every single copy of those books … and burn them," Sam said to his brother.

"They're online now," Charlie said, wrinkling her nose ruefully at him. "So, good luck with that."

Liked Anna_. Don't think about it. _He'd liked Anna too until she'd come back brainwashed and tried to kill his parents_. Stop thinking about it_, Dean told himself furiously.

"Awesome," he said out loud, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet, trying to force the shivers spiralling around in his guts aside. "Well, you two crazy kids deal with that, and I will go see if there's anything to this case of yours."

"Uh … I'm coming with you," Sam said, throwing a look at Charlie as he got up. His foot slid out from beneath him and he lurched to one side, grabbing hold of the table as the room swam in and out of focus and his knees threatened to buckle under him.

"Uh … whoa!" Charlie got up, grabbing his shoulder as she looked at his legs. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes," Sam said through closed teeth, telling his legs to straighten up.

"No," Dean countered. "You agreed, Sam. You're taking it easy as long as you're off your game."

"I'll go with you," Charlie said immediately, looking at Dean.

He turned to look at her, wondering who or what he'd pissed off now to get this kind of flack from both his brother _and_ the woman who'd broken her arm last time she was in the field with them.

"Look," he said, gathering his patience. "No disrespect, but there is a big difference between reading about hunting and actually hunting."

"I'm coming … with," Charlie said firmly.

Sam watched his brother's expression. _Not really a good move to get Dean's back up before you start_, he thought, glancing at Charlie's set jaw.

Dean looked back at her. "Last time you got your arm broken, you remember that, Charlie?"

"I'll be careful," she said, lifting her chin.

"Or you'll be dead," Dean said quietly, his eyes dark and cold.

"That's my decision."

"Not if you fuck up and it's me who has to pay for it," he countered sharply.

Sam could see him gauging her determination, testing and pushing at it. He looked at Charlie and saw her swallow, clearly not having thought of that side of the equation. She licked her lips.

"I won't let that happen."

Dean's mouth quirked up humourlessly. "You might not get a choice."

"You need someone to back you up," she said. "I'll follow orders, I'll do exactly what you tell me, but at the worst, I'll be another pair of eyes, won't I? Someone to hold the flashlight and draw the fire?"

Sam saw the flicker of an emotion cross Dean's face and realised that was exactly what he didn't want. "Dean, either she goes, or I do. That's up to you."

Dean looked at him flatly and turned away. "Alright, Charlie, let's see what you've got."

Charlie hurried after him.

* * *

Dean loaded the chamber and handed her the Colt. "Okay, if you can hit that target, then we can talk about you –"

Charlie lifted the .45, sighted along the barrel, told herself to squeeze, not pull and put two shots into the head of the man-shaped paper target at twenty-five yards. Dean looked disbelievingly at the shots. The first one had been a kill shot. Through the eye. The second might or might not have killed, but it would've incapacitated the target, and probably killed, the exit hole taking half the lower brain out.

"You been practising?"

She nodded. "My coach said my hand-eye coordination was very good," she said, looking down at the gun, handing it back to him. "I told him it wanted to be after playing every arcade game known to mankind from the age of eight."

She looked up at him. "I'm not useless, Dean, and I know my limitations. I won't get in your way."

He looked at her thoughtfully. "You'll follow orders, no arguments?"

"Scout's honour," she said, her eyes beginning to light up. He sighed inwardly.

"Alright, but if you're going to do a ride-along, you gotta lose the novelty t-shirts," he told her, turning away, then back as she didn't move. "Come on, unless you got a piece, we need to find something more to your weight."

She sighed and followed him out of the range and back up the stairs, through the library and into the four rooms that held what Dean affectionately referred to as 'the collections'.

Looking around, and catching a lightening in his expression, she thought of Edlund's descriptions of the trunk of the black car. Here it was, multiplied by a thousand. Dean's heart of the home.

"You're a good shot, and generally speaking we're shooting a little closer range than twenty-five yards, more like five or six, so you can get away with something lighter."

"I can handle yours," she argued. "It's a .45."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you can but why carry the extra weight if you don't have to? Try the SIG." He gestured to the rack beside them. "It's 9mm and softer recoil."

Brows drawn together, Charlie turned to the rack, lifting off the SIG Sauer and checking that mag and chamber were empty, then dry-firing it. She hated to admit it but it was a lot lighter than the Colt, and fit better in her hand, the pull on the trigger lighter and an easier reach. She looked down at it.

"Yeah, it's okay, I guess," she said casually.

He hid a smile as he turned away, moving into the ammunition room. It was a better gun for her but he seriously doubted she'd admit that now.

Pulling out the boxes, he handed her three magazines for the handgun. "Blue dot is regular," he told her. "White dot is silver. Red dot is hollow point."

She nodded and exchanged the magazine in the gun for the blue dot, slamming it home, and checking the safety before she tucked into her waistband, the other two mags going into her jacket pockets.

"Anything else?" she asked, looking around the room.

"You got anything that'll pass for government agent in your wardrobe?"

She shook her head. "Uh … if by government agent, you mean really –"

"No, I mean government agent. FBI. Bland. Dark colours. No flash."

She sighed. "No."

His exhale was louder than hers. He shrugged and walked back out through the weapons room to the library.

"Sam, need FBI documentation and ID for Charlie, just a temporary one," he said without preamble as he walked into the room. "Do we need Yavoklevich for that or can you do one?"

The law firm that handled the Litteris Hominae chapters had sent out new sets of ID for them a week ago, complete with business cards and phone numbers to a battery of operators that worked the lines twenty-four hours a day. Garth had been downcast when they'd turned down his offer of providing a fibby contact number for them. It wasn't that he didn't trust the hunter, so much as … well, he didn't trust him. He was known to forget to charge the batteries on the phones occasionally. And nothing said government agency like a this-number-is-out-of-service message to a law enforcement officer.

"I'll get the office to do it and we can print it out here," Sam said distractedly, reading the screen in front of him. "You got a photo?"

Dean shook his head and turned around to head for the offices on the other side of the library, glancing at his watch. "How long will it take them?" he called back over his shoulder.

"Just sent the email," Sam yelled back. "About five minutes and it'll be here."

"Right." He looked back over his shoulder for Charlie. "Keep up!"

Against the dark red curtains of the office's cloak alcove, he took a dozen shots of her, giving up when it was apparent that she wasn't going to take it seriously. He'd gotten one, straight on, no smile. It would have to do.

"Sam should have the printout for the badge and cards now," he told her, turning to go upstairs. "Grab it and your stuff, and I'll meet you at the front door in five minutes."

"Where are you going?"

He looked down at her impatiently. "As soon as you've got something suitable to wear, we're going to talk to the coroner, so I need to look the part too."

"Oh." Charlie glanced back at the library. "Right, meet you at the front door."

He sighed and kept going up the stairs. Exactly how much of a horrendous mistake was this going to be, he wondered uncomfortably?

* * *

_**US-24 E, Kansas**_

"Told you I'd find out about you, Dean," Charlie said quietly from the passenger seat as they headed for Salina.

He flicked a glance at her. "You told me that I'd tell you," he reminded her sourly.

"Well, tom-_a_-to, tom-_ah_-to," she said breezily, waving her hand. "I'm sorry I pushed hard, last time we talked."

He stared at the road. "It's fine."

Charlie hesitated, chewing the corner of her lip as she debated the pros and cons of attempting this conversation. _Who dares wins_, she told herself firmly.

"I just –"

He cut her off. "Charlie, don't. Don't even think about starting. There's no way I'm talking about any of it, so just … don't."

"But –"

"Yeah, see, no 'buts'," he said sharply.

"This is why you don't have friends, Dean," she muttered disappointedly.

The short laugh, as humourless as it was, surprised her.

"Yeah," he agreed dryly. "This would be why."

* * *

_**Salina, Kansas**_

The mall was full of afternoon shoppers and Charlie had tried on fourteen different outfits, all of them incredibly unsuitable, before she emerged in a plain suit, that was muted and neutral looking. He nodded, pressing the photo that he'd cut down to size into the box outline on the badge and sealing with a square of Frisket. It wasn't as good as his, but it was rare that anyone asked for a closer look and they'd just have to wing it if someone did. It was too late now to worry about it.

"Can you wear that out?" he asked. She nodded, carrying her bag and the clothing she'd worn in over to the counter.

Dean watched her for a moment, wondering if he should've asked about the convention lie on the drive here. Charlie was a quid pro quo kind of person, he thought dryly. She'd have wanted some truths in return. And he couldn't.

She walked back over, tucking her clothes into the bag and walking to the mirror to tuck her shirt back in and check the outfit.

"What happened to Sam?" she asked, looking at him through the mirror. He looked up and shrugged.

"We got a shot at closing the gates of Hell, for good," he said, and she turned around, her eyes widening.

He smiled a little at her expression. "Yeah, that's what I thought too. There's a way to do it, but it was written by God on a piece of stone, a tablet – and only a prophet can read it."

"So Chuck's helping?"

He shook his head, shunting aside the regret. "No. We don't know what happened to Chuck," he told her. "There's a new prophet, college kid called Kevin. He managed to decipher a part of the demon tablet but it's hard work. He said we had to complete three trials, tests of strength or character or who-knows-what, to be able to do the job. It was supposed to – Sam completed the first trial, and … something happened to him. I don't know what. I don't think he knows either. He started to get sick. The second trial was worse. And he got worse. That was a couple of weeks ago."

Charlie turned back to the mirror and looked at herself absently. "Trials. Not good. Is Sam going to be strong enough for the third one?"

She watched him as he put the finished badge in the window of the ID holder, his shoulders suddenly tense. "Dean –"

"I don't know," he said shortly. "We don't know what the third trial is yet. And our prophet's in the wind."

"What about Castiel?" she said, looking at him.

"How the hell do you know about Cas?" he asked, looking at her reflection.

"The books," she reminded him, seeing his jaw tighten as he remembered. "He seemed helpful?"

"He's MIA," he said shortly. "With a tablet of his own, doing god-knows-what." He closed the wallet, rubbing a hand over his face. He wasn't going to tell her everything, but he couldn't pretend that it wasn't some kind of a relief to be able to talk about some of it.

"This whole thing is … I mean, Sam's a tough sonofabitch, but Cas was saying that these trials are messing with him in ways that even he can't heal."

Under the prosaic explanation, Charlie heard the edge of his fears. She knew why now, at least, she thought. Why that fear always lurked under Dean's voice when he spoke of his brother.

"Odds have been worse in the past," she offered tentatively.

He raised a brow. "That supposed to make me feel better?"

"You're both still alive?"

"Yeah." He rubbed a hand over his face. "And we both went to Hell. And we both came back a lot different to how we went in."

He saw her expression change, and swore at himself for bringing that up. "Here," he said, getting up and handing her the ID. "Got a pocket inside that thing?"

She slipped the wallet into the inside pocket. "Must be nice, having a brother, I mean. Someone to watch your back."

"Yeah," he said heavily, not wanting to go down that road either. "No brothers or sisters?"

"Actually, I have two," she told him lightly, turning away as she heard the 'no go' warning in his voice. "Their names are X-Box and PS3."

He looked away. Talking to her was getting harder. He could hear the patches of quicksand in her voice, all the brittle places that she joked about to hide what was underneath. He glanced down at her phone, sitting on the table beside him. It wouldn't hurt to take out a little insurance. Just in case there was something she wasn't telling them.

"I'm not getting any reception," he said, frowning at his cell. "Can I use your phone?"

Charlie turned to the mirror. "Sure."

It was like walking through a minefield, she thought uneasily. She didn't know what had happened in their lives since Sam had jumped into a hole in the ground holding onto a fallen angel in his head. Obviously, he'd gotten out, and Dean had left the family he'd promised to go and live a normal life with … she sneaked a look in the mirror at him. Had he left them? Or had something worse happened?

She suddenly understood why they were so creeped out by the books. She knew so much about them, without knowing _them_. It felt dishonest, as if she'd come by the information in an underhand way. She guessed that, in a way, she had. It hadn't been shared, buttressed and bonded with a slowly developing trust. She knew things about them that they never would have shared voluntarily. She shivered, icy fingers slipping up her spine. That was starting to creep her out as well.

How would she feel to have her life written down, for anyone to read about, to be viewed as entertainment? All the things that she'd felt and done and thought? _Naked_, she thought. _Vulnerable beyond belief_. She wondered if there _was_ a way to get rid of all the copies out there, catching the thought and smiling a little at herself.

"Hey, it's me," Dean said. "You okay?"

He heard his brother's tightly controlled anger. "Yes. Dean. I'm _still_ fine. Look, I –"

"Well, let the healing continue," Dean overrode him quickly. "I'll check in with you later."

He cut the call and handed the phone to Charlie, as she turned to face him.

"That was … abrupt," she commented.

"We're on a tight schedule."

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam looked at the phone in his hand for a moment and put it back on the counter, lifting his gaze to stare at the target. The Taurus lay on the counter, next to his hand. He could do it. He was sure of it. He wasn't going to lie down and pretend that everything was going to be okay if he just got a bit more sleep.

Sweeping the gun up in his right hand, he lifted and fired. The first bullet hit the target a couple of inches outside the right arm. The second, higher and a couple of inches above the left shoulder.

And that would be one monster unscathed, and possibly hitting some poor schmuck standing within the gun's effective range behind it. He looked down at the countertop for a long moment. Dean was right. He had no business being out there in the state he was in.

He lifted the gun again and fired. The bullet hit left of centre in the chest. Quite a bit left, but at least he was within the outline.

It would be a last resort, he told himself. He couldn't ride the pine. Not now. He needed the skills to stay sharp and it wasn't going to happen if he wasn't using them at all.

Thumbing the safety on, he turned back to the door and strode out.

* * *

_**Salina, Kansas**_

Dean knocked on the open door of the coroner's office, letting Charlie precede him inside.

Behind the desk, the coroner looked at him questioningly. "Come in."

Charlie stared at her. _This was it_, she thought nervously. _Lying for a living_. _Problem. Mouth not responding. At all_. She was acutely aware that her expression was similar to that of a rabbit, sitting on a road, watching the headlights of an oncoming car get larger and larger.

Dean waited a moment for Charlie to do or say anything, and smiled at the woman sitting patiently and looking at them. He pulled out his ID, holding it up and saw Charlie struggling to get hers out. He slid a look her way and stared pointedly at the badge she held, upside down. Charlie saw his expression and saw the badge, swallowing as she slapped it shut and turned it around, feeling her throat close and her chest tighten in a way she'd hadn't felt since she was nine and the cold winter air and a long-awaited smile brought on a mild attack of asthma.

"I'm Special Agents Hicks, this is my partner, Special Agent Ripley, we're here about the body with the creamy filling," he said, as Charlie got her ID around the right way and held it up again.

"Ah … right," she said, "Ripley and Hicks. You two must get a lot of jokes from your co-workers."

"Uh, ma'am?" Dean looked at her one brow raised as his stomach took a nose dive.

She smiled. "_Aliens_ is one of my favourite movies."

"Uh …" he faltered for a second. "Oh, yeah, just coincidence, I guess. Never seen it myself."

"I'm sure," she said, folding her hands together in front of her as she glanced at Charlie and back to Dean. "I didn't think you guys would have any interest in this case?"

"FBI, ma'am, we never leave a stone unturned," Dean said, aware that Charlie was statue-still and utterly mute beside him. "Mind if we take a peek?"

"'Course not," she said briskly. "I just need your signed Chain of Custody Request, and it's all yours."

"Sorry, the what?" Dean asked, swearing inwardly. Why was it always the women who got all bound up in the bureaucracy gig? He felt his palms dampen. She'd already noticed too much about them.

"Chain of Custody Request? From your supervisor to mine?" she clarified helpfully, her gaze flickering to Charlie again.

"Right … uh …" He pulled out a business card from the breast pocket. "You know what? You could call my ASAC and I'm sure he can give you the override, or whatever …" He walked over to the desk, holding out the card.

She looked at it and wrinkled her nose. "Nah … I'm sorry, unless he can get me the form, I can't give you access to the body."

"But … FBI," Charlie said uncertainly.

The coroner turned her head and looked directly at her. "I understand, dear. But paperwork is paperwork."

"Of course," Dean said, determinedly drawing her attention back to him. _Charlie was about as much use as a_ – he walked confidently over to the desk and sat down. "Jennifer – it is Jennifer, isn't it?" he asked, smiling warmly at her.

She looked down, laughing a little. "Yeah."

"We have been on the road all day, and this is strictly routine," he said, looking down at the name plate in front of him. "Dot the 'i', cross the 't' kind of thing."

He raised his head, a little surprised to find that she was watching Charlie, her gaze slipping back to meet his as she smiled understandingly. He leaned toward her, dropping his voice a little. "If you could do us a solid …" he trailed off, and smiled.

For a moment, he thought he might've had her, her gaze flickered up to Charlie for a second and back as she leaned toward him. Then she met his eyes. Hers were cold, unimpressed by the manoeuvring. Unimpressed by him.

"Come back with the signed form," she said, her voice as low and intimate as his had been. "I'd be happy to do you a solid."

_Not a chance_, he thought.

"Until then …" Her smile didn't reach her eyes. Didn't even get close. He nodded and got up.

"Sorry to have bothered you," he said, gesturing sharply to Charlie to get out.

"No bother," Jennifer said, a very slight smile curving her lips.

* * *

Dean walked fast down the hallway and let out his breath as they got out of the building. Was he getting worse at this, he wondered? The goddamned slip up with the names. The failure to charm. _What the fuck?_

"That never happened in the books," Charlie said as she dragged in a deep breath.

He turned to Charlie. "Wanna tell me what happened in there?"

"I'm sorry! I froze. I couldn't Control-Alt-Delete my way out," she said in frustration. "Real life role-playing is hard."

"It's okay," he said, hiding a smile. "We'll come back later when Doris Do-Right isn't here anymore."

"Oh, perfect." Charlie glanced back at the building. "Breaking and entering."

Dean frowned. "It's no different than hacking."

"Beg to differ," Charlie said, looking at him wide-eyed. "One I've doing since I was a teenager, the other I've done once, with you two walking me through it, and I had my arm broken in the process."

"What did you hack when you were a teenager?" Dean asked her.

"Uh … NORAD," Charlie said.

"Can you get us that form, signed, before the morgue shuts?" he asked, wondering if this was going to be the easier option. It would be satisfying, he thought, to put the form on Jennifer's desk and smile down into her eyes.

"Depends," Charlie hedged. "Is there a local office here, or I am crossing state lines? She'll verify the signature, which means it's gotta be legit. I could get into the database, but if there aren't scanned signatures on file that I can access, then it's going to take time to get one – the right one – that we can use," she started to talk faster. "Then there's the whole moving around thing, with the Feds, you have stay mobile, pay phones are better than wireless unless we could tap into someone else's wireless but that would bring the Secret Service down on them –"

Dean rolled his eyes. "You know what? Forget I asked."

"It's just not that simple, especially on the road –"

"I'm hungry. You?" Dean cut her off again, turning away and heading for the car.

Charlie hurried after him, wondering if she could get the form. Not without her gear, she thought. And she couldn't just disappear for a day to drive to Topeka and back. She'd make sure, in the future, that she carried it all with her. All the time. In the trunk, like they did. She wondered if he'd let her keep the SIG. Its weight under her jacket felt remarkably reassuring.

* * *

Dean picked up the burger, and took a bite, looking across at Charlie. "How'd you find the books?"

She looked up and shrugged. "I was searching for everything related to the supernatural, to mythology, any kind of lore, I had bots running for absolutely everything. One of them retrieved the books and I downloaded the first one to see if it had anything that might be of use."

"And you recognised the names?"

She shook her head. "At first, I thought it was a coincidence. I mean, I really didn't know much about you guys, and there was no way to verify if it was you, even. But Carver Edlund got your mannerisms, your personalities, pretty much everything about you down pretty accurately and after a while I recognised you," she said. "After that … I'm sorry, I just couldn't stop." She looked at him. "I can guess how that feels, but –"

He smiled coolly at her. "No, you really can't, Charlie."

"There are a lot of people out there who think that who you are, and what you guys do is truly amazing," she said softly.

"No, they don't. They think the writer's got a good imagination. They think the characters in the books are amazing," he said, shrugging as he took another bite. "They don't know us. They wouldn't want to know us."

He ducked his head, remembering the two guys from Chuck's first convention. Demian and Barnes. Weird guys but nice enough. Naïve as hell.

"Do you hate it so much now?"

He looked up at her in surprise, mid-chew. "What?"

"This. What you're doing, you and Sam. This life," she said, gesturing vaguely.

He chewed his mouthful slowly, wondering how to answer that. "You know, everyone in those books, 'cept for Cas, now, is dead?"

Charlie frowned at him. "Everyone – like who?"

He pulled in a breath. "Like Rufus. Like Bobby. The people who helped us stop it."

_Like Ellen and Jo and Ash and Pamela_, he thought, shunting the memories aside. He watched the expressions crossing her face.

"I'm sorry," she said after a moment. "I –"

"It's okay," he said brusquely, brushing aside the incipient apology. "This life takes everyone, sooner or later, Charlie. It's not a maybe or sometime. It's guaranteed. Skill gets you so far, but luck … luck always run out."

She looked away. "So … you're waiting to die?"

He snorted. "No, but it'll come anyway."

"Everyone dies, Dean."

He smiled. "Some people die in their beds, with the memories of a good life and their families around them."

"And some die in a meaningless car crash because some asshole thought he could drive when he was drunk, or in a skyscraper at a normal day at work without the slightest inkling that a group of terrorists have hijacked a plane," she countered fiercely. "That's not what's important."

"No? What is?" he asked her, knowing the answer for himself, wondering what she thought it was.

"It's living. It's what you do –" she hesitated for a moment, the scene flooding back to her. "It how you spend the time that's given to you that counts."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Is that a quote?"

Charlie dropped her gaze to her plate. "Might be. Paraphrased."

"From Lord of the Rings, right?" he pressed.

"Oh, alright, yes. Doesn't make it less true," she said, picking up her sandwich and biting into it.

* * *

The scanner under the dash crackled and Dean turned the volume up a little as he listened to the officer at the scene reporting the death.

"Charlie," Dean leaned over and shook her shoulder.

She opened her eyes and swivelled around as he started the car. "What is it?"

"Death down by the train lines, suspected homicide. Witnesses."

"What?"

"A body," he said slowly. "Found in the same condition as the one we missed out on seeing at the coroner's office."

"Another attack?"

He smiled. "Wow, you're good."

"Shut up," she said, straightening in the seat. "Who found the body?"

"Couple of kids by the sounds of it."

"How do they know it's the same as the last one?"

"Kids poked the guy with a stick and he coated them."

"Ugh."

He turned the car onto the narrow asphalt road that ran alongside the train lines, seeing the flashing lights ahead.

"Maybe you should go first this time?" Charlie whispered, looking at the police, ambulance and coroner's vehicles parked around them.

"Nuh-uh, back on the horse, kiddo," Dean said, opening his door. "Come on."

_Alright_, Charlie told herself grimly. _You can do this. Just acting, right?_ She'd been acting her way through life for years. _Just like Scully_, she suddenly thought, gaining a measure of confidence with the thought of the red-haired agent. _Only taller_. She pulled out her ID and held it ready as she strode to the policewoman standing behind the crime scene tape.

"Evening," Charlie said, her voice a little high, but not too bad. "Special Agent Ripley, my partner, Special Agent Hicks –"

The uniform nodded. "The other agent's already here."

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, half-turning to look at the tall man in the suit standing closer to the police car on the scene.

Charlie glanced at Dean nervously and nodded to the uniform as Dean looked past her and walked around.

Sam turned as they walked up. "What took you guys so long?"

"What the hell you doing here?" Dean asked, his expression stony.

"Working the case," Sam said shortly. "Same as you." He gestured behind him. "Jake Hill. Librarian. Went missing yesterday, no relation to the other vic. Coroner already swooped in and scooped up what was left."

"Yeah, we met her, bit of a stickler," Dean said, glancing down at the dark stain on the ground. "Well, there's no body, nothing else to see here, so why don't you head home?"

"Still have to talk to the witnesses," Sam said with a half-smile.

Dean glanced at the pair of teenagers sitting by the edge of the road. "We can handle that," he said to Sam. "Charlie, why don't you go talk to the witnesses?"

"But I don't want to miss the –"

"Charlie!" Dean snapped at her. She smiled uncomfortably and turned away, walking to the kids.

"Look man, I know you're frustrated," Dean said to Sam. "But you're also sick."

"I'm not leaving, Dean," Sam said, forcing himself to stand upright and still.

"I know you want to help, I do but you –"

"Dean, you cannot take care of the both of us," Sam interrupted. "I need to be out here. Play through the pain, right?"

"Come on, man, don't quote me to me!" Dean said, shaking his head in exasperation.

Charlie walked back to them, looking at Dean's expression and deciding that intervention might be a good thing.

"So," she cut in. "The boys noticed something on the vic's arm, just before it covered with them with years of future therapy, said it looked like a blue handprint."

"Sounds like something you read about," Dean suggested to Sam brightly. "In a book. At home."

"I'm not leaving," Sam repeated, his voice low and harsh. "Until we find out whatever is doing this."

Dean looked at him for a moment and shrugged. "Whatever."

He turned around and started back to the car. Charlie watched him go, glancing back at Sam.

"You guys are like an old, married couple," she remarked.

"Charlie –"

She turned to look at him. "Does this mean we don't have to break into the coroner's office anymore?"

Sam looked past her to his brother. "That's a great idea."

They both turned at the clunk of a car door and the distinctive sound of the Impala's engine rumbling to life and watched Dean reverse the car back out of the narrow access road.

"Is he leaving?" Charlie asked, her voice high suddenly. "He's leaving!"

"That's alright," Sam said firmly. "I stole your car; I think I know where he's going. Come on."

"Cool." Charlie started to turn to follow him as his words penetrated. "Wait … you stole my car?"

Sam shrugged. "Let's go."


	41. Chapter 41 FPS

**Chapter 41 FPS**

* * *

_**Salina, Kansas**_

_Sonofabitch was impossible_, Dean thought as he drove back to town. How was he supposed to protect anyone when they did crazy shit that made it fucking impossible? He glanced down at the lit dash, noticing the fuel gauge and turned off the road he was on, heading for a gas station.

Was it that he was worried about Sam dying, or that Sam wouldn't be strong enough to complete the final trial and close the gates of Hell, he wondered bleakly. Both, he decided after a moment's reflection. There wasn't much he could do about his brother's life. He couldn't stop him from choking on a chicken bone, or …or … whatever else fate might randomly throw at him, but he needed to finish what they'd started. He needed to shut every last rat hole and lock them all down there, Crowley and his horde.

_Sam needs it too_, a small voice at the back of his mind whispered to him. _Maybe even more than you do. His need for atonement is as great as yours_.

He frowned. This wasn't about making up for what he'd done, he thought impatiently. It was … preventative. Doing the job right so no one else had to go through what they had.

He pulled up to the pump and turned off the engine, getting out and filling the tank, going to pay for it, all on autopilot as his thoughts churned along the same track.

* * *

The building was closed and dark and empty and he walked to the rear doors, checking the rooflines for security cameras, looking around casually for anyone else who might be walking past. He was alone. Slipping the picks out, he undid the outer door locks by feel, hearing them click and pushing the door.

Inside, the dim lighting was enough to see where he was going. His shoes tapped softly on the linoleum floor as he retraced their path back to the morgue. The double glass-paned doors were locked and he crouched a little, sliding the picks in and feeling his way through.

He looked back to check the corridor as he pushed the door open, reaching into his pocket for the flashlight and thumbing it on. Turning, he raised the light and felt his heart slam into his ribs as it lit up a face against the darkness. Lurching back reflexively, he forced himself to breathe as he belatedly recognised Sam and Charlie standing in front of him, teeth snapping together in a mix of frustration and adrenalin surge.

"What took you so long?" Sam asked, hiding his amusement at Dean's reaction.

"I stopped for gas," he said defensively as Sam nodded. "Shut up, body's here."

He strode between the two of them, irritation rising at … everything. He stopped at the door, tucking his flashlight against his chest as the crunch of tyres over gravel sounded outside and a pair of headlights swept over the exterior windows as the car pulled into a parking space at the front.

"What the hell –" he muttered, hearing the engine turn off.

Behind him, Charlie looked at end of the corridor, thinking fast. They didn't need that long in the morgue, just a peek at the files and at the handprint the kids had seen, she thought. She could buy them a little time. The coroner had been hard-pressed to keep her eyes off her, and at the time she'd just found that terrifying, but in retrospect she thought it might help. She forced herself to move out, trotting along the corridor on her toes.

"Charlie," Dean said softly as she passed him. She waved her hand at him and kept going.

"Charlie!" he shouted in a hoarse whisper.

Ignoring the implicit order, she slipped around the corner and ducked behind the filing cabinet, peering out through the windows that lined the wall. She came back around the corner and looked at them.

"It's the coroner," she said, pitching her voice low. "I got this."

Dean looked at her for a moment and pushed the door to the morgue open, going inside, hearing Sam behind him. Charlie would either keep the woman busy or she wouldn't, he thought sourly, but it might buy them just enough time.

* * *

Charlie tucked herself behind the cupboard, listening as the coroner came down the stairs, opened the door to her office, walked inside.

_Give her three minutes_, she told herself tensely. _Take off your coat … think about getting about getting a coffee … sit down at the desk_ … she knew the routine of after-hours working.

_Don't think about it_, she told herself as she got to her feet. _Just do it_.

She walked confidently around the corner and stopped at the open office door, smiling brightly as the woman behind the desk looked up.

"Hey, there," she said, stepping into the office. _Why didn't I come up with a story before I came in_, she thought as she felt the muscles of her face beginning to ache with the effort of the constant wide smile. Dean had told her the best way to lie was to come up with a simple, unverifiable story and stick to it. Her mind was blank.

"Front door was open," she said, gesturing toward it.

"Uh … oh, what are you doing here?" Jennifer closed the file in front of her and got to her feet.

_Good question_. "I … uh … came back," she started slowly. "To get a blank copy of that form you asked for."

Jennifer gave her a doubtful smile. "The FBI doesn't have Chain of Custody forms?"

_Crap_. "The field office had a power outage," she said, feeling a thin thread of perspiration running down the back of her neck. "… after catching fire. Figured I just could borrow a copy or two?"

Jennifer drew in a deep breath. "Of course, just give me a sec."

"No problem," Charlie said, looking around the office. "Take your time, I'm off the clock."

* * *

Dean pulled open the metal door and stared at the clean and irrefutably empty tray inside.

"What the hell?" he muttered, glancing sideways at Sam as his brother found the file.

Sam looked up questioningly.

"It's empty."

Frowning, Sam flipped through the file in his hand. "Uh … they burned the bodies."

"Already?!"

"Yeah," Sam said, looking at the next page. "They think it's something like a … outbreak scenario – even got the CDC to sign off on it," he added, reading the last form.

"These folks run a tight ship," Dean commented, closing the door.

Sam's brow wrinkled up. "This isn't a 'tight ship', Dean. You know how long it takes to get the CDC to even come and look at this stuff? And do their tests?"

"No, but I have a feeling you're gonna tell me."

"Weeks," Sam said, setting the file onto the table and pulling out his phone. He selected the camera and started shooting.

"So this mean we need to take Silkwood showers now? Or is this still a case?"

Sam smiled, flipping to the page. "Blue handprint? Not radiation. And from memory the exterior liquefies as well as the interior."

Dean looked at him. "Reassuring."

"You get the feeling we've seen something like this before?" Sam flipped over another page, the flash light the paper as he took the photo. "Or read something?"

"I haven't seen anything like this," Dean said, shaking his head. "I don't remember reading about handprints, of any colour."

"We need the library."

"Yeah, just hurry up," Dean said, looking around the room. Charlie'd been gone too long.

"I'm done."

* * *

Charlie trailed Jennifer down the corridor as the coroner headed for the lab. "Uh … there's just one other thing …"

Jennifer stopped at the door, turning around to look at her impatiently. "Yes?"

Through the half-wall of windows in her peripheral vision, Charlie could see the morgue was empty. "You're busy … some other time," she said quickly, pasting on another smile.

"What?"

"Thanks for the forms!" She gave the coroner a little wave as she turned and headed back down the hall, letting the smile drop with relief for her aching cheeks.

What had happened to the awesome comms equipment they'd had, she wondered tiredly. Not that she wanted Dean's voice in her ear the whole time, but she would've known that they were safely out and not kept babbling at the woman like an idiot in search of a nuthouse.

She opened the front door and left it unlocked, looking around. The blink of a flashlight across the road caught her eye and she hurried toward it.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam sat at the table, books stacked to either side of him as his face scrunched up in thought, trying to remember the exact nature of all the monsters they'd dealt with. "Wraith?"

"Only sucks the brain juice," Charlie said, looking at her program.

"Crocotta," he tried again, frowning.

"Life-force, not flesh," she replied, shaking her head.

"Klost worm?"

She looked down at the tablet and back to him. "I haven't got that," she said. "But a worm … not likely to leave a handprint, is it?"

Dean tapped the page of his father's journal and looked across at Sam. "Djinn."

"Djinn drink blood, over a long period of time," Sam countered. Dean shook his head.

"The ones we've found did. Arabian djinn," he said, looking down at his father's journal. "Dad didn't run into djinn while he was hunting, but Jim did."

"Jim Murphy," Sam said, his voice a little flat with the rush of sorrow.

Dean nodded. "Jim told him there're at least thirty different kinds of djinn, mostly in the Middle and Far East. And they're all slightly different variations on the theme –"

"The wish-come-true theme?" Charlie asked diffidently.

He nodded, looking around the library. "We got lore on djinn?"

Sam snorted. "Oh yeah, we got lore on them."

He got up, walking down the first aisle and turning along the back of the room. Stopping at the section that held most of the mythological creatures of the Middle East, he looked along the titles and began to pull out books.

Dean looked at the pile as his brother dumped it in front of him. He glanced at Charlie.

"Off that thing, time to do some real research," he ordered, passing her the book from the top of the pile.

* * *

"Persian djinn," Sam said, half an hour later. "I think."

He looked at the page and started reading. "The djinn of Persia and of the borderlands of Afghanistan are a different species from the western djinn of the Arabian peninsula, although they share many of the same characteristics and are sometimes mistaken for them. The tattoos that are permanent on the Arabian djinn, thus forcing them to live in ruins and graveyards and places where they will not be seen, are not visible on the djinn of Persia until they attack. These djinn will leave a mark on the victims where they have touched them, a skin discolouration of a blue tint in the shape of fingers or the entire hand."

He looked at Dean. "Yahtzee."

Dean nodded. "What else?"

Sam skimmed over the text. "Same method for killing – silver knife soaked in lamb's blood – uh … the victim usually lasts for less than twenty-four hours after being touched. They're placed in a deep fugue state, unaware of their surroundings as their blood is heated by a chemical reaction with the poison and gradually breaks down the soft tissue of the internal structures of the body."

"We got the ingredients for the cure here?" Dean asked, getting to his feet.

"Yeah, the apothecary has everything and the recipe is in the Poison section, under djinn," Sam said, his gaze still on the information in front of him. Dean nodded and went out, his footsteps sounding down the length of the hall as he sped up.

Charlie stared at Sam. "This is totally awesome," she said softly. "You have a cure for djinn poisoning!"

Sam looked up and smiled a little. "And for vampires," he said, the smile widening as he saw her expression.

"You have to get this into a digital form, Sam," she said, looking around at the shelves, the hundreds of thousands of books, scrolls, texts and leather-bound manuscripts they contained. "I mean, searching with this amount of information …" she trailed and looked down at her tablet. "You could take something like this in the car with you and have the whole library at your fingertips."

He nodded. "Don't think I haven't thought of it, Charlie. It's just that we don't have that much time."

"Maybe I could help?" she suggested, wondering if that was a good idea.

"You want to spend your life sitting in this place scanning books into a computer and putting them all together in a database?" he asked her, his tone derisive.

"Maybe not," she agreed, a little disappointed. "But I'll think about it. Start off small, maybe?"

He laughed softly. "There's nothing "small" about this, Charlie. It takes longer, I'll grant you that, but I can't see any way we can do anything but search manually, at least until we've –" He hesitated and she looked at him.

"Closed the gates of Hell."

"Dean told you?"

"He mentioned it," Charlie hedged. "If you can find Kevin."

He looked at her. "Now that, that we could really use your help with."

She nodded. "As soon as we're done with stabbing the djinn, I'll get on it."

They looked up as Dean came back into the library.

"Store room already had some in injectable form," Dean said, holding up a bottle of a clear, brilliant blue liquid. "Did I mention that I love this place?"

"Well, breakthrough means snack time to me," Charlie said, putting her tablet back in her bag and getting up from the table. "And … I just want to … stretch my legs," she added, picking up her jacket. "I'll pick us up some grub, and unlike you, Sam, I will not forget the pie."

Sam smiled slightly, watching her as she went down the stairs and up to the gallery.

"Hey Charlie," Sam called out as she reached the door.

She turned to look back at him, her eyes wide. "Uh, yeah?"

"Call on your way back, so we can let you through the illusions," he told her.

"Oh, yeah, of course," she said quickly, turning back to the door. "Sure."

The door clunked as she shut it behind her.

"She seem a little off to you?" Dean looked at his brother.

"Since the second she got here," Sam agreed, looking from the closed door to his brother.

"You think it's something to do with us?"

"I don't know," Sam said, leaning on his elbows and looking down at the book in front of him. "She's always been a bit too caffeinated, but I can't tell if this is new or something we're seeing 'cause we're spending more time with her."

Dean nodded. "Might be personal."

"Exactly."

* * *

_**US-24 E, Kansas**_

_Might've been faster to go through Salina and take the interstate_, she thought as the headlights lit up the smaller highway in front of her, but this way would be quieter, and if she kept to the speed limit around the outskirts of the towns, she could speed on the stretches in between. Didn't make much difference. It was three hours, give or take, to Topeka and she wouldn't be back until morning, her cover and lies well and truly blown.

They wouldn't trust her again, she knew, feeling a pang of regret for that loss. She couldn't tell them, couldn't tell anyone, and there wasn't another choice in the matter. She should've organised the payments before she'd come but she hadn't really expected to be drawn into the case the way she had been, or to want to spend the time with them, the combination of chasing down the clues through research and getting in on the action a more intoxicating addiction than she could've imagined.

And they had their answers now, she realised, her fingers tightening a little around the steering wheel. Knew what it was they were hunting. They didn't need her any more. They might be mystified when she didn't return. But they'd keep going.

She'd loved the books because there had been parts that had resonated with her life, with the loneliness and the constant moving around, the fluctuating sense of purpose that had driven her, as it drove them. She'd taken a measure of comfort from knowing that she couldn't complain about the way things had turned out for her, not when she knew what it was like for them. And Edlund had captured a lot of Dean's ambivalence about his life, loving the hunt and the open roads that filled the wide country with a sense of freedom almost unparalleled in any other life, yet torn apart by what had happened to his family, by the horror and despair of losing his friends, by the aching need to have something of his own, someplace of his own. She could understand that, too.

She straightened in the seat, glancing down at the speedometer as she cleared the last town's limits and putting her foot down a bit harder. Things were the way they were, she told herself firmly. _All we have to decide is how to use the time that's given us_.

The old wizard's voice played in her mind and she focussed on the road ahead, feeling a little braver and resolute in her decision.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Dean looked at his watch and sighed. It didn't take two hours to go pick up some food and take a walk. She'd gone. Flown the coop. He was surprised that he wasn't surprised.

Sam looked up as he walked into the library. "I tried calling her. Nothing, she's not picking up."

He looked at the laptop's screen in front of him. "And I checked – there was no Comic convention in Topeka." He looked back at his brother. "Why would she lie to us?"

Dean shrugged. "One way to find out."

"What are you doing?" Sam asked as Dean pulled out his cell and tapped the keys.

"When I called you from Charlie's phone, I turned on her GPS," he answered distractedly, looking at the map on the screen. "She's in Topeka."

* * *

_**Topeka, Kansas**_

Charlie looked at the missed calls on her phone as she turned off the engine. Three so far, all from Sam. She sighed and opened the door, leaning back in to retrieve her bag and coat.

The small apartment was two blocks from the hospital and she'd gotten a three year lease. It held everything she had in the world in the confines of the three rooms – two rooms and kitchenette, she amended to herself, opening the front door and looking around dispiritedly.

It was cheap and convenient. She'd certainly lived in worse places than this, she considered, dropping her bag and coat on the chair. She walked to the small dividing wall next to the kitchenette and dropped to her knees, pulling off the skirting board at the base of the wall and reaching behind it for the small cash tin.

Putting the box on the table, she sat down and unlocked it, opening the lid and lifting out the documentation inside. All her worldly possessions and all her carefully acquired identification. She had three passports, two US and one British, in three different names, none of them her real one. A dozen credit cards. Fourteen bank accounts, spread around the country. Three birth certificates. One marriage certificate, faked of course. It wasn't much, she thought.

Opening her laptop, she typed in the command linking her to Web Account, an online funds transfer service.

The scrape outside the door was faint but she swung around to look. The utter silence in the place made every noise seem sinister and startling and with the events of the last few days, it wasn't going to take much to set her off like a defective alarm clock, she thought tiredly.

On the screen, money transferred from one account to another, little ones and zeroes flying through the perceptive aether of a world that would lose everything if the power ever went out.

_Not your problem_, she told herself, watching the amounts change. She was going to need more money and soon. _Another worm?_ It was the simplest way. The most secure way. All those fractions of cents. Computers really operated more securely with whole numbers.

The noise came again and she got up, walking to the door and looking at the locks. They were too easy. Too easy to pick. Too easy to break through. She'd have to set up something better soon. Opening them, she pulled the door toward her a little, jamming the toe of her boot beneath the edge – just in case someone flew out from around the corner and tried to push their way in – and peered nervously out into the hall.

It was empty.

_Nerves. Just nerves_. She pushed the door shut and turned the locks, dragging in a deep breath as she turned back to the room.

_Not nerves._

Jennifer O'Brien, Salina coroner, stood in front of her, and her eyes … her eyes were glowing the deep blue of a reactor's pool, she thought in astonishment.

* * *

_**Two hours later.**_

Dean and Sam stood in the hall. There was no signs of trouble there, the apartment door was intact, the locks not tampered with, Dean thought, knocking on the door frame.

"Charlie?" he called out. "Hey, Charlie, you in there?"

Well, he thought as Sam's picks opened the lock, they _hadn't_ been tampered with. Sam pushed the door open.

"Dean." Sam said softly, pulling the Taurus from his waistband. Behind him Dean drew the Colt and followed him in.

In the main room, a small table and several objects had been knocked over. Whatever happened, happened right here, Dean thought. The table closer to the kitchen, with the laptop still open and running on it, was undisturbed. He looked around carefully and saw the black holes in the exterior walls. She'd had time to get her gun out and shoot, he realised. But that hadn't stopped whatever had been in here. Not human, then. At this range, Charlie couldn't have missed, and she wouldn't have. The trajectories were about right for a headshot. Someone taller than she was, but not by much.

Sam looked at the laptop on the table as Dean checked the tiny bathroom.

"Hello."

Dean turned and looked at the table. The open cash tin was surrounded by identification documents. His eyes narrowed as he saw the different names on the cards and passports.

"What is this place?"

"Whatever it is," Sam said slowly as he looked at two different passports, one American, the other British. "It belongs to Charlie … or some …variation of her."

Dean picked up another passport and a stack of cards, flipping through them. "Who the hell is she? Jason Bourne?"

He dropped them on the table and turned away, letting his gaze roam over the room, looking for anything that might shed a bit more light on the woman they'd let into their already-too-complicated lives.

He'd known she was lying to them. He hadn't realised that there'd be this sort of background to her. His instincts were – had been – good with people, good with feeling their capacity for evil, for lies, for secrets. How'd she slipped past those instincts so easily, he wondered.

"Alright, there's no forced entry – aside from us – so it had to have been someone that she knew … or …"

"Djinn," Sam said, staring at her passport. "Did it know about her before she came to us?"

"I don't know," Dean said shortly, picking up her phone. "Here's all our missed calls. You got anything on her laptop?"

He walked back to the table, dropping the phone onto the passports.

"Yeah," Sam said, frowning at the screen. "She's been making payments through her aliases to Shawnee County General, here in Topeka."

"What, like a charity?" Dean asked, looking at the statement screen of the web transfer company.

"No, a patient," Sam said, pointing at the entry. "Gertrude Middleton."

"We need answers," Dean said, staring at the name. "Ah … I'll take Gertrude, you keep djinn-digging. Meet back in Lebanon?"

"Yeah, I'll borrow Charlie's car again," Sam said absently.

Dean turned and walked to the door, leaving Sam sitting at the table and staring thoughtfully at the screen.

* * *

_**Shawnee County General, Topeka**_

Dean smiled at the long-term care nurse. "I'm looking for a patient, a Gertrude Middleton?"

"Yes, she's here." The nurse looked up at him. "Are you family?"

"Uh, no, friend of the family," he said. "I was wondering how she's doing?"

"You can see her, if you like, I'm on rounds right now."

"Thanks, that'd be great," he said, following her down the long, quiet hall.

She stopped at a doorway and opened the door, walking around to the side of the bed.

Dean followed her in, looking at the woman who lay there, her skin pale and doughy, a respirator taped to her mouth.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked, moving to the end of the bed.

The nurse picked up the woman's arm, lifting it and gently massaging the skin and muscle. "Gertrude's been in a persistent, vegetative state for sixteen years. About a year ago, her condition worsened. The ventilator is now the only thing keeping her alive."

Dean looked at the machine. He was familiar with them. "What happened to her?"

"She and husband were hit by a drunk driver," she said quietly. "He didn't make it. They were on their way to pick up their daughter from a sleepover, the police said."

"Their daughter?" Dean asked, a trickle of unease threading through him.

"She was twelve," the nurse said.

"What happened to her?"

"There were rumours," the nurse said, frowning a little. "She went to a relative for a short time, but got into trouble, I think. No one here saw her after that. I'm not even sure she's still alive, although she's listed as next of kin for Gertrude."

_Pretty sure she's still alive_, Dean thought. _And yeah, she got into trouble alright_.

"Who's paying for this?" he asked, thinking of the donations on the laptop screen.

"Folks have been donating to Gertrude's care over the years. It's a sweet gesture but the truth is that she's gone."

"She ever get any visitors?"

"There are few nurses who've said that they've someone in here, reading to her, but no one has ever officially signed in to visit her, so I couldn't give you a name," she said, looking up at him.

He nodded, looking down at Gertrude.

"I have to finish my rounds, if you'll excuse me," the nurse said.

"Thank you," he said, walking around the bed as she left the room. The woman's hair had been cut short, for ease of care, presumably. It was the same fiery red shade as Charlie's, vivid against the white pillow. The pale skin was the same too, he thought.

It explained a lot. Explained those brittle places in her. Explained the jack-rabbit nerves and the bravado and the shadows at the back of her eyes when she thought no one was looking. Twelve and on her own and teaching herself everything she knew. A lot of people would've caved, he thought. A lot of people would've gone into the system and been either broken or flattened by it. But not Charlie.

"You've got one hell of a daughter, Mrs Middleton," he said quietly to her. "I promise you, I will find her."

* * *

_**Beloit, Kansas**_

Charlie looked around groggily, taking in deep breaths to counteract the roiling nausea in her stomach and clear her head.

Around her, the large empty room had red-painted metal shelving lining the walls and stretching into two-thirds of the space, unidentifiable drums and cans, pallets and crates of metal and timber, and mildewed boxes filling them. The concrete floor was cracked and filthy. Too big for basement, she thought, staring around. Factory? Warehouse? None of it looked like it'd been used in a long time.

The rope that bound her to the back of the wide carver was thick and heavy, pinning her arms to her sides from under the shoulder to her elbows. She twisted against it, trying to feel for any kind of stretch but it wasn't giving.

"You're not going anywhere."

The cool, sharp voice made her head snap up, the coroner – the _djinn_, she told herself – standing in front of her, the single overhead bulb gleaming on hair only a few shades darker than her own.

_Breathe. Just breathe and think_. Dean and Sam had been in this position a thousand times and they'd usually figured out a way to get free – or the other one had come looking for them, she realised a second later. Would they come looking for her? _Why would they_, a small voice said in her head. _You left them, you lied to them. Why would they waste their time looking for you now?_

The djinn came close to her, breathing in deeply. "You know what I smell on you, dear?"

"Deodorant?" Charlie hazarded a guess. "A little pee… maybe?"

"Fear."

The word was drawn out, savoured, and Charlie felt herself shrinking under the avarice that filled the monster's voice. She was certainly reeking of it, she thought unhappily. The thought raised a question.

"Djinn smell fear?"

The djinn moved around behind her. "Aah … if it's djinn, then you and your companion are not agents, and not normals." She crouched beside Charlie. "You're hunters."

"No, not really," Charlie stammered, leaning away as far as the ropes would let her go. "I'm more of a hunter-in-training, totally not worth killing."

The djinn laughed. "Oh, but you are worth killing, sweetheart."

She stood and walked around the chair, looking down at Charlie with a gentle smile. "You see, I look for those with that fear flooding through them, the bitter bite of adrenalin and the hormones released when the heart is thumping and your life is flashing before your eyes … we prefer the richer taste of blood and flesh."

"And the … uh … others don't?" Charlie couldn't help but ask.

The woman sniffed. "The djinn of the west are simpletons. Blood is all they ask for and all they receive. And they cannot pick and choose as we can. Cannot disguise themselves in the world of mortals. As we can."

Charlie laughed uncomfortably. "You … uh … keep saying 'we'?"

The djinn smiled. "You were easy to track, even tonight. So afraid, Charlene, tell me … what are you so afraid of?"

She stepped close to Charlie, reaching out to take her arm, pushing the sleeve back up to the elbow.

"No," Charlie twisted against the ropes, pulling at the hand that held her wrist tightly. "No!"

The djinn's eyes glowed and the tattoos, barbed and curving and lit at the edges with the same electric blue light, curled down along her skin of her arm as she laid her hand over Charlie's forearm.

The touch was paralysing, Charlie stiffening helplessly against the chair, her eyes wide open as the poison seeped into her, through her pores and into her cells, trickling deeper and deeper, short-circuiting the mesh of her nervous system, cutting off the sensory information to her brain, replacing it with its own messages.

She struggled to keep her eyes open as a thick lassitude filled her. No one would come looking, she thought hopelessly. She would die here, and there would be no one to take care of her mother, to even make the decision that might have freed her. There was no one left …

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam listened to his brother as they walked into the library. "So, no chance of a recovery, huh?"

"No." Dean shook his head tiredly. "Did you find anything?"

He sat down at the table as Sam moved around the other side, pushing the laptop around. "Yeah, think so. John Doe from nine years ago, the original coroner wanted the body to be sent to the CDC but the new coroner's assistant 'accidentally' ordered the body to be burned."

Dean looked at the report. "New assistant?"

"Jennifer O'Brien."

Dean looked at him. "Course. It's a helluva cover for hiding kills."

"Now get this," Sam said. "CDC? Never heard from Jennifer this time either. She faked the reports, burned the bodies to cover her tracks –"

"Why'd she get sloppy again after nine years, and start leaving the bodies were they could be found?" Dean wondered aloud. It didn't add up. Not for any kind of djinn, they were usually extremely cautious about leaving no traces.

"Well, let's go ask her," Sam said, reaching across the table to hit another key on the laptop. "According to the county's property records, she owns two pieces of property in this county. One's a two-bedroom house in town, about ten minutes from here. The other is an abandoned freight store, bought for the back taxes nine years ago, in Beloit."

"Just an under an hour away, and a nice, central location for Salina and even Topeka," Dean finished. "Well, that's certainly convenient."

Sam's expression hardened slightly. "You think Charlie's there?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, she wouldn't take her to a house, not in a little town like this. These things kill faster than the other kind, but it's still a slower process than bite and feed. She'll want somewhere very private, and …" He tapped the screen lightly. " … she's been using it for nine years now."

"We got everything?"

"But the kitchen sink," Dean agreed, getting up.

* * *

_**Beloit, Kansas**_

The building wasn't large, and Dean figured the layout as they came through the office door, a wide hall with a half dozen empty offices down the left, the rest of the space open warehouse to the right. He nodded up the corridor and turned right, a frown drawing his brows together as he saw the shelving, forming a maze of partly blocked views through the huge open area.

He moved through the aisles of bracketed metal shelves, looking obliquely between their contents, most of his attention on his peripheral vision, waiting for movement. On the pitted concrete floor, the soft soles of his boots were silent, and he drifted through, moving a little faster when he saw the open space ahead, and the bright gleam of a light on a bowed red head.

He checked the ends of the aisles as he strode across the floor to the chair she was bound in.

"Charlie." Reaching out, he shook her shoulder lightly, her body limp and her head flopping. "Charlie, hey, Charlie."

She didn't respond, and he looked down, seeing the blue handprint, curled around the inside of her left forearm.

* * *

Sam continued down the corridor, checking each of the open and empty rooms as he passed, glancing into the main storage area through the openings as he headed to the back wall. He couldn't hear anything, not even Dean's footfalls, and the silence created a small but persistent ringing in his ears.

It wasn't a noise or movement that warned him, he thought later. Just a sense that something living stood behind him. He swung around and saw her, arm lifting and the knife he held arcing out toward her. She leaned back, letting the blade whistle past her throat, her hand flashing out and gripping his wrist, and the knife dropping as she hit the nerve centre, fingers flying open involuntarily. He felt her strength as she gripped his clothing, lifting and throwing him across the room into the chain-link gate. His fingers gripped the links as the impact took his breath, and he felt his strength rushing out of him, dropping to the floor and turning to watch her approach.

_Do something_, his mind shrieked at him. But there wasn't anything he could. He couldn't fight her, he barely had the strength to get up.

She walked closer, pushing her sleeve up as the tattoos descended down the length of her arm, lit in neon blue with the same pulsing that filled her eyes, a smile curving the wide mouth.

She was two yards from him when she stiffened suddenly, the light flaring and dying from her eyes, the tattoos vanishing from her arm. He stared at her, then heard the wet squelch of the knife being pulled from between the ribs, and she dropped to the floor, Dean standing behind her, looking at him.

"You okay?"

Sam nodded. "Where's Charlie?"

"Back there," Dean said, gesturing to the warehouse as he stepped forward with his hand extended. "Out cold."

They ran down the hall and turned into the loading bay, Sam pulling out the syringe they'd loaded with the order's supply of djinn antidote. He knelt beside her, pulling the cap off with his teeth and stabbing the needle into the arm, above the handprint. He depressed the plunger and the antidote flowed down the needle into the muscle.

Nothing happened. Dean remembered being stabbed by his brother with the damned stuff, it'd worked instantly, the second it was in his bloodstream.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked Sam.

"I don't know," Sam said, staring at her. "Different djinn, maybe she needs a different antidote?"

"That was the only one in the book!" Dean snapped, leaning toward her and putting his hand on her face. "Charlie? She's burning up, man, we're not letting her turn to Jell-O!"

"Okay, okay," Sam said, face screwing up as he thought about the lore. "Okay, djinn poison puts your brain into some kind of feedback loop while your blood boils, right?"

"Right."

"Uh …if the antidote didn't break the loop, then maybe we have to find a way to break it from the inside?" he looked at Dean. "I mean, djinn take your –"

"Wishes," Dean said tersely.

"Right, and turn them into a dream –" he said. They looked at each other.

"I need to get inside her dream," Dean finished.

"African dream root." The thought hit both at the same time.

"We didn't use all of it, but I don't know if it's still in the car," Sam said. Dean ran a hand over his face as he tried to remember if he'd ever taken it out.

"I don't either," he said, turning to look at Charlie. "I'll check, what else did we need?"

"Nothing, just a liquid to steep it in and a hair from her," Sam said, gesturing to the kitchen at the other side of the warehouse. "Water will do."

Dean turned and ran for the door, dodging the shelves as he twisted and turned around them. How long did they have? How long before the poison finished its job of dissolving her?

_Don't think about that_, he snapped at himself. _Think about what you can do, what you will do_.

He threw open the door as he hit it, sending it crashing back into the metal wall and skidded on the gravel, slamming into the side of the car, digging through his pocket for the keys. He didn't remember taking the damned stuff out. Bela'd brought a few hundred grams, couple of dozen pieces of the roots, and they'd used less than half, even for the two times they'd gone in, first to Bobby's dreams then to his. There had to be enough left. Just … where the hell was it?

The trunk popped open obediently and he shoved the shotgun under the lid, turning on the big flashlight that sat to one side and tipping it over to show absolutely everything that was in the deep well. He unzipped the bags, pulling them open and shoving the contents to one side then the other, lifting stuff out and putting it back. He really had to go through this shit again, he thought, his fingers moving in a frenzy. The jar was in the fourth bag, tucked down at the bottom and wrapped thickly in a cloth. He grabbed it, and turned off the flashlight, knocked the gun out from under the lid and slammed the trunk shut.

Racing back inside, he breathed a deep sigh of relief as he saw Sam waiting with a small jar filled with water.

"Got it," he said, handing the jar to his brother as he turned to look at Charlie. _How the hell could they tell what was going on inside her?_

"Alright," Sam pulled out a few small pieces of the root and put it in the water.

"Wait," Dean pulled out a pill bottle, filled with a mixture of fine powders. He tipped a couple of teaspoonfuls worth into the jar and the powder frothed as it reacted with the root-spiced water.

"What was that?" Sam looked at the jar. The water had gone from the clear tea-coloured liquid to a cloudy mix.

"Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and sugar," Dean said. "Stops it from tasting like pure crap."

Sam reached out with his knife and cut a hair from Charlie's head, dropping it into the glass as Dean pulled another chair from the pile of furniture to one side of the room. He put it beside Charlie's and turned back to his brother.

Sam handed him the jar, and he took a step backward, lining himself up with the chair. "Last time it was like a knockout, right?"

Sam nodded. The last time, they'd been sitting on the beds and the transition from waking to dreaming had been instantaneous. They hadn't even realised they were in the dream for several minutes.

"You better sit down," he told his brother. Dean sat down and chugged the glass, closing his teeth slightly as the roots attempted to enter his mouth as well.

He slumped back against the chair, head dropping to his shoulder, and Sam caught the glass as it slipped from his fingers.

* * *

_Music_. He could hear music.

Glenn Miller? One of the old big band swing tunes. He looked up, finding himself in what looked like … a military office. He was at a desk. He was wearing a white coat, over a uniform. Khaki. Army. A lot of medals pinned to the side of it.

"What the hell?"

The music played cheerily on as he stood up, looking around the office. Definitely military base. Behind the desk, the black and white portrait on the wall was Truman, he thought. _Military circa … sometime in the mid-to-late forties?_ He pulled off the white coat and dropped over the back of the chair, walking around the desk to the gramophone that was playing the record. Pulling the needle off, the music suddenly got louder, filling the whole base.

_Charlie was a secret swing fan?_ He looked around the office and saw the table, on its side, barricading the door. Walking to it, he pushed it aside, then looked at the leg closest to him. It was hefty enough to turn anyone's head into a smear, he thought. And it was a folding leg, he'd only have to break the hinge. He slammed his foot down on it and picked up the fallen leg, shifting his grip as he opened the door and looked out.

It opened into a narrow corridor, dead-ending to his right. Fort Brennan Military Hospital, the decal painted neatly on the end wall told him. Not a huge amount of help. To his left, the view was less appealing. Filing cabinets and cupboards were placed at intervals along the walls, but they didn't block his view of the bodies. Or the blood.

He looked down as he stepped over the first one in the corridor, automatically noting the throat wounds and the spray patterns and the peculiar colour the body goes when it's drained of blood.

_Vampires._

Now, why the hell was Charlie dreaming about a military hospital full of vampires?

He continued cautiously up the corridor, stepping over the bodies that littered the narrow space, aware that the chair leg in his hand was about as much use as – he stopped next to the body of a nurse, looking down. She'd fallen close by the wall, but half-hidden under her body was a newspaper. He checked the run of the corridor both ways before crouching, pulling it out from under her and straightening up. The front page had been smeared with her blood, but not enough to obscure the headline. Or the date.

_**Truman Denies Military Experiments**_, the headline screamed. _Thursday, April 12, 1951_.

"1951?" he said, brows drawing together. Military. In the past. With vampires. And he thought he'd had bad dreams. He dropped the paper back on the body and kept walking, stopping when he reached the elevator. The buttons were dark but he pressed them anyway, then moved to the doors, trying to force them open.

The growling came from behind him, from a room or a ward or an office he'd just passed. He turned to look, jaw tensing as he saw them emerge into the hall, two of them. _Not your regular vamps_, he thought, staring at the blackened eyes and dripping mouths. _Military experiments anyone?_

Beside him the elevator 'tinged' and the doors opened.

Dean stared, dumbfounded. Charlie stood there, a surreal cross between T2's Sarah Connor and Jolie's Commander Frankie Cook, complete with black eye patch, her long, red hair pulled back sensibly into a ponytail, black singlet half-hidden under a bandolier of bright red shotgun shells, snug, stretch pants tucked into flat-soled black boots and holding a simplified version of the KSG fifteen round bullpup pump action shotgun, aimed at him.

She jerked her head to one side and he shifted back and to side of the doors as she stepped through them, firing the gun at the vamps and taking them down.

She turned to look at him, putting a hand on his arm. "Come with me, if you want to live."

He looked at her, brows rising.

"I've always wanted to say that," she said, shrugging as she passed him the shotgun. "What are you doing in my dream?"

He bit back his exasperation. "You were attacked by a djinn. The coroner, Jennifer, remember?"

Charlie looked at him doubtfully as she pulled off the eyepatch. Damn thing was screwing with her depth perception anyway, and she didn't think she'd been able to pull it off, overall look-wise.

"Djinn usually send you to your, uh, 'happy' place," he said, looking down the corridor. "No judgement, but you got a really strange sense of happy, kiddo."

"No, no … wait," Charlie said, looking down as a memory came back to her. The djinn, sniffing her, breathing in deeply the scent she'd said was … fear.

"No, Jennifer said her kind feeds off fear." She looked up at him. "This isn't my happy place; this is a recurring nightmare of mine."

"What is this?" Dean asked.

"It's a video game," she admitted reluctantly.

"Wait a sec, you telling me this whole thing is a video game?"

Charlie shook her head in frustration. "It was called The Red Scare, a first person shooter against super-soldier vampires," she explained edgily. "I copied it off the game company's server before it was finished, reprogrammed it to reflect my flamingly liberal politics and then I released it – for free."

He looked at her, unsure of how that fit into the whole nightmare scenario.

Charlie saw his confusion. "And they tracked me and had me arrested," she added, shoulders dropping. "I was twelve."

"And you've been on the run ever since," Dean said, another piece in the puzzle of Charlie Middleton falling into place.

She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. It was ancient history. It wouldn't let her go, but it was still ancient history. "So how do we get out of here?"

"I don't know," Dean said. "We gave you the djinn antidote but it didn't take. And I killed the djinn."

"Both of them?" Charlie asked him.

Dean looked at her. "What?"

"There were two of them," Charlie said, her head snapping around as another low growl came from the other end of the corridor. "You didn't know that?"

"No," he bit out. "I didn't know that."

"Come on, we need to keep moving," she said, walking down the corridor toward the t-intersection ahead.

"We gotta back and help Sammy," Dean said, striding after her. "Tell me about this game, maybe if we can win then –"

They reached the T and stopped, peering out to check the lengths of the hall. The growling filled Dean's side and he stepped out, blowing away the closest vampire, pumping the slide and hitting the one behind it. It took another round to take it down and he was turning when he heard Charlie's pump firing behind him.

The vampire fell and Charlie started walking up the hall to the right. "Look, I don't know how long I've been out, but I've been through this level a thousand times already."

"What!?" He looked down at her.

"Every time I beat the level and save the patients, I get reset back to the beginning, only with less weapons and the vampires are faster," she explained tersely.

Dean turned around, firing at the vampire following them twenty yards away. He wasn't sure what the hell to make of what she'd said. He turned back and Charlie fired at another vamp walking toward them. It dropped to the floor and she looked back at him.

"It's an infinite loop," she said. "Like Pac-Man without level 256."

"Level what?"

"Nothing." She shook her head, walking away.

"Wait," Dean snapped. "What patients?"

* * *

Sam looked around at the faint noise. The brick and metal building had a lot of hard surfaces and even small noises were amplified and echoed. He'd seen one rat. It was probably just another one.

He walked back to where Dean had killed the djinn, listening, looking. When he reached the body, he stopped, looking down at it. Was there some way of breaking through the djinn's poison with its own blood, he wondered? He'd have the check the library again. This couldn't have been the first time a hunter or legacy had run into the Persian variation.

He saw the movement from the corner of his eye, spinning around as the boy emerged from behind the shelving.

"You killed her," he said, his voice thin and high. He looked at the knife in Sam's hand.

Sam looked at him. "She was a monster."

"She was my _mother_," the boy said furiously, charging at him.

Sam felt the weakness in his body, as he swung aside, the knife blade scoring along the kid's shoulder but not driving in. Despite the ten inch height advantage and the eighty pound weight advantage, it was a djinn he was facing, not a scrawny high-school kid. He turned too late as the boy came for him again, and a fist slammed into his chest, the cartilage between his ribs creaking from the blow. The second one hit under the jaw, and he fell to the floor, landing on his arm, the knife dropping onto the floor for the second time that night.

"So," he said, putting his hand on the floor and levering himself to his knees. "It wasn't her that got sloppy. It was you."

"You shut up!" the boy screamed, stepping close, leg swinging and Sam tried to fall back from it, ride the blow to some extent as it connected with the side of his face. He rolled over onto his shoulder, spitting out a mouthful of blood and shaking his head as he tried to focus on the djinn. The boy had turned away, was staring down at his mother's corpse.

"I came of age," he murmured. "I had to feed."

Sam closed his eyes, feeling for any shred of strength he had left. He opened them and looked down at the knife that lay close to his hand, bracing himself as he slid his hand across the floor and his fingers closed around the haft. _Come on, stand up and stick it in_, he told himself angrily. _You can fucking well do that much_.

_Come on, Sam, you can do better than that. Dean's voice, half-derogatory, half-encouraging, behind him after a sparring match had gotten a little more enthusiastic than usual. Get up, Sam, not going to just lie there, are you?_

_He'd been angry, hell, he'd been furious with his brother, and Dean had seen it, had seen the anger and used it against it him, letting him wear himself out with wide, swinging blows and had closed in fast and hard, a double tap to the diaphragm that had taken his air and his strength at the same time._

_He'd gotten up and seen his brother's amusement in the dark green eyes. Had seen too the tacit apology that had lurked behind it, never to be expressed, only felt, a permanent shadow that lay inside of Dean, that fighting was never entirely make-believe, never just sparring or practice. That in the back of both of their minds lay the knowledge that they would do this for real, against foes who would not fall with a single blow and who would not stop when they were down. Who would eat them if they lost._

He shunted the memory aside and shoved hard against the floor, staggering to his feet.

"I screwed up. She knew how to cover her tracks. To cover mine. She always told me not to play with my food," the boy said softly, swinging around.

Sam looked down at him, seeing the surprise in the neon-blue eyes.

"She was right," he said, driving the knife deep into the kid's side, his hand knotted in the collar of the jacket, holding him up, bracing him as he twisted it.

The light died out of the eyes and he let the body fall, doubling over as a coughing attack brought up another mouthful of blood, this one from deep inside.

* * *

Charlie led them down one corridor and up another, finally stopping at a pair of double doors with Ward A painted on them. They pushed them open, and barricaded them shut behind them.

"The thing is, the loop has to have something to key it – it's not like this in the real game. Something's changed and it has to be a key, but I can't figure out what it is."

"What do you mean, a key?" Dean asked, looking down at her.

"Like a reason, a – a – something to make it loop," she said, her voice holding an edge of frustration. "There's got to be some reason for it to reset back to the beginning."

Dean turned around and looked down the length of the room. A four bed ward, it wasn't long. Only two of the beds were occupied, the curtains drawn around them. He walked to the closest, lifting his hand and drawing back the curtain, knowing exactly who he was going to see lying in that bed.

He was right. Gertrude Middleton lay there, no respirator in the dream, but the same not-quite peaceful look on the unconscious face, the same red hair, cut short, for ease of care.

"Charlie," he said, glancing at her. "I know who this is."

_Charlie's dream_, he thought. Charlie's _fear_. Charlie's _pain_.

Charlie walked to the bed and drew back the other curtain, looking down at the woman lying in the bed for a moment before she turned to Dean.

"What are you talking about?"

He looked at her, hearing the denial and anger in her voice. He knew that feeling, knew it so well. For most of his life, denial and anger had filled his voice when anyone had mentioned his mother.

"When you went missing, Sam and me found your place in Topeka. Saw the payments that you make for her," he said gently. "So, I went and visited your mom … looking for you."

Charlie swallowed. She wasn't sure what was closing her throat, compressing her chest. That he'd found out about her, about her and her mother … or that he and Sam had actually looked for her. She didn't want to lie to them anymore. She didn't want to feel so completely alone anymore. Her shoulders slumped as she looked up at him.

"She's the reason I'm in Kansas," she said, her gaze flicking between his face and the floor uneasily.

The tension slid out of him as he listened. _No more lies_. He watched her turn away from him to look at the woman in the bed.

"I sneak into the hospital whenever I can, and I just … I read to her," she said, her mouth twisting up a little. "She used to read me to sleep, when I was a kid."

Memories rushed in, warm and comforting. The bedroom, purple, not pink. Bookshelves and posters of dragons and elves and endless mountain ranges and secret caves ... and curled deep in the soft, light quilt, sleep tugging at her, but desperate to stay awake for a little longer, just till the end of the chapter, the next chapter. Her mother's face, alight with life, filling her voice with the excitement of the story, each of the characters, loved and brought to that same life – _just stay awake till the end of the chapter_.

"She read me The Hobbit," she said, lips curving into an unconscious smile. "And C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle, and Kipling and Le Guin and Barrie."

She forced the memories back, exhaling sharply as she turned back to him. "She's the reason I love the stuff I love."

Dean looked at her, knowing now what she was talking about. _Charlie's fear_. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Charlie's face twitched as she looked away, her chest constricting at the words and the automatic reaction - _no! not gone! still here! she might come back! no!_ - filling her.

"She's not gone," she snapped at him, grabbing the curtain and drawing it closed as she spun away from him and faced the door.

He exhaled softly, drawing the other curtain closed and turning to look at the other occupied. Pulling the curtain back, he froze as he saw his brother lying in the bed.

"Sam?"

Charlie heard the name and the deep doubt in his voice and walked to the bed. She'd never looked at the other patients before, but she was reasonably sure that Sam wasn't in her dream at all. "Is this my nightmare, or yours?" she asked Dean.

He shook his head, turning away abruptly. In the corridor outside the ward, a growling noise echoed.

Charlie followed him, checking her rounds and shifting her footing on the smooth floor.

The crash against the doors was heavy and Charlie put a round through the door, under the small observation window. She flicked a glance at Dean as she pumped the slide, loading the next round.

"This is it, the last battle," she said, turning to the door, her fingers tightening around the gun. "Come on, we've got to save the patients."

"Wait, wait, wait," Dean said, wondering how the hell he was going to explain to her that she was trapping them in this game. "You said we're stuck in a loop, right?"

She nodded, her gaze cutting back to the door as the growling got louder.

"But out there, in the real world, you're dying, and I might be too," he said, flicking a glance at the door as a fist punched through the glass window. "We gotta find a way to break this loop."

The noise was distracting and he put a round through the door under the window, the vamp dropping.

Charlie nodded. "Okay, how?"

"I think the only way to stop this, is to … not play," he said, looking at her.

"What?" Charlie stared at him. "No. No, we gotta save them."

The window in the other door was smashed and Charlie looked back to the door. "Nut up, Winchester!"

Dean scowled as he fired through the door.

"See?" Charlie said. "You can't stop either."

"Listen to me, Charlie," Dean said, his voice low as he turned back to her. "This poison, it's designed to put your mind into an endless cycle while your insides turn to mush, okay? And its fuel is fear. Now, call me crazy, but I think that the only way to break this cycle is to let go of the fear and to stop playing the game."

Charlie felt herself tense as she began to see what he was asking of her. "You don't _know_ that!"

"I know that your fear is creating all of this," he said, ignoring the smashing and breaking sounds coming from the end of the room, Charlie's shot into the doors. "But you're not afraid of those super-soldier vamps out there –"

Charlie turned away, tried to shut out his voice, pulling shells from the bandolier and loading the tube, tried to concentrate on what she needed to do, ignoring the small voice that said he might be right.

_He wasn't_.

"– you're not afraid of this game, and you're not afraid of what it did to you," Dean continued relentlessly. "Hey!"

He grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around to face him. "Look at me," he insisted, holding her straight, his fingers digging into her until she looked back at him.

"You're afraid of losing her," he said, letting her go as he saw her expression change. "Charlie, she's already gone."

"No! No, you don't understand," Charlie said frantically, backing a step away from him, refusing to consider what he wanted her to do. "You don't understand! I was at a sleepover, and I got scared."

Dean _heard_ the fear then, thrumming in her voice, rippling through her and shaking her slender frame, the memories so close and thick around her that he could almost see them as she struggled to tell him, to make him see why she couldn't do this.

"So, I called my parents," she said, her breath hitching as she tried to get air into a chest that was too tight. He had to understand why it was impossible. Why she couldn't. "To come and get me. They should never have been driving that night."

"It wasn't your fault," Dean said softly.

"I just want to tell her – that I'm sorry – and I love her," she said, looking up at him pleadingly. "And just have her hear it, again – I just need her to hear it one more time – but she can't. She _can't_."

He watched the tears spilling down her face. Somewhere, lost and deeply buried, a five-year old boy sobbed into his father's arms, the same words falling from him, the same pain eating him up, the same knowledge tearing him apart.

"I know," he told her. "Believe me, I know … but you gotta let it go."

Charlie looked at the doors, at the vamps that were clawing their way through. _Let it go_. She didn't think she could. She didn't think she could live with herself. Didn't think she had that kind of strength. Not her. Not the woman who ran.

Dean watched her turn away, heard her rack the slide, saw the barrel rise as she faced the doors. If she fought them, they would start the level again, he thought, and there would be another chance to do it right. But she might be dead by that time. And there was absolutely nothing he could about it.

_Let it go. Let her go. Let her be free of the machine and being imprisoned in her flesh when she had someplace else to be_. If Edlund's books had given her nothing else, she knew that there was a place for her mother to go. Could she say goodbye? Give up on that need that had driven her and whipped her from place to place, the need to atone for what she'd done? She couldn't keep going like this. Afraid. Desperately trying to make something impossible happen, one last time. Holding on so hard that she couldn't think of anything else, couldn't be or do anything else.

_Mom? I'm so sorry, Mom_, she thought to the woman who lay in a bed in a hospital, alone. _I miss you and Dad so much. I love you so much. I didn't mean it. I didn't. I'm so sorry_.

She let the barrel drop. The noises of the vampires faded away until they stood together in silence. Dean glanced at Charlie and walked to the doors, pushing back the cabinet and opening them. The corridor outside was empty.

Charlie looked at the curtain beside her. Hesitantly, she gripped the edge and pulled it back. The bed behind it was empty.

* * *

Sam leaned over Charlie, his fingers against her skin. It was still hot. She'd been crying in her sleep, the tear tracks drying on her cheeks. He didn't know what that meant, exactly. Were they still in the dream? He looked down at Dean. Neither had moved an inch since Dean had dropped into sleep.

He checked Charlie's pulse, feeling the rapid beat in her neck. He could see Dean's, in the hollow of his brother's throat, mostly steady, occasionally speeding up, or slowing down. He looked at his watch. It'd been an hour. It'd felt like twelve.

It felt like that house in New Harmony. The field in Pontiac. It felt like Roman's lab, he thought uneasily. It felt like being alone. He pushed the thoughts aside. They were alive. Dean would get them out.

He saw Dean's head lift and crossed the space in a couple of strides, a titanic relief filling him. "Hey, Dean."

His brother opened his eyes slightly, looking up at him blearily. Sam reached forward, catching his hand and pulling him upright.

"Hey, hey! Come here," Sam pulled him to his feet, crowding close to him as he reassured himself that he was here, alive, breathing, okay. "You okay? What happened?"

Dean shook his head. "I'm okay."

He turned back to the other chair, memory of the dream flooding back as he saw Charlie lift her hands to her face.

"Charlie?"

She looked up at him, remembering the empty bed.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice barely a whisper. He would've given anything at that moment to know that he wasn't responsible for the pain and shock he could see in her face, in her eyes. It'd been the only way out, but he taken her hope and he'd crushed it.

Sam watched her get to her feet slowly. She took a step forward and stopped, her arms crossing over her stomach as her head dropped, the curtain of bright hair falling and hiding her face. He stared at her. She wasn't making a sound, but her shoulders were shaking. Dean walked to her, wrapping his arms around her. She didn't move or look up, and his hold tightened a little as the shaking became more pronounced.

Something had happened in there, Sam thought, watching Dean's face as it closed up with pain. Something that had broken through Charlie, and had had an impact on his brother as well.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Charlie looked around the large, square bedroom. She'd spent the last thirty six hours in it, sleeping mostly, and in a strange way it had been the most safe she'd felt since … since she was twelve. The furniture was heavy and stodgy, she thought critically, looking at the polished timber pieces. But they were unchanged. Here to stay. And maybe that was what had been reassuring about it.

She turned and walked out, carrying the big leather Gladstone down the stairs and along the hall to the library. Sam looked up as she came in.

"You're going then?" he asked, and she was glad to hear the small note of disappointment in his voice.

She nodded. "I have to, I have … stuff I have to take care of. Real world stuff. I want to help with finding Kevin, and I will, from Topeka, and then Michigan, but I can't just pretend that I don't have ties to those worlds."

"Yeah," he said, glancing down at the laptop.

"Sam, you've been tested in fire and pain and everything else," she said, walking to the table and sitting down in the chair next to him. "You're still here. You'll be strong enough."

His mouth curled up at one side as he looked away.

"Dean has your back, you know," she added, looking at him. "He won't let you down."

Sam nodded. "He never has."

"You won't let him down either, will you?"

"No," he said firmly, looking back at her. "No."

"Then there's nothing to worry about," she said lightly, getting to her feet. "Send me the list of Kevin's cards and aliases and we'll find him. And I'll swing by, in a while, when everything is done."

"Sounds good."

She nodded and walked down through the war room to the stairs, going up and stopping at the gallery rail. "Take care of yourself, Sam, okay?"

"You too."

* * *

Outside, Dean was leaning against the railing above the stairs. She walked up them, stopping in front of him, tilting her head as she took in the slightly closed expression on his face.

"Well, thanks for stopping by, Charlie," he said, mouth quirking up to one side. "Always wanted to get Tron'ed. You going back to Topeka?"

She smiled thinly as her gaze cut away. "Yeah, it won't be over until I do. Gotta let go, right?"

He ducked his head, unwilling to comment on that.

"What about you? You going to let it go?" She wasn't sure what she was asking about, he had a million things that he held onto.

"Never," he said, his gaze lifting to meet hers. "Just a natural-born hoarder."

It surprised a laugh from her, through the tightness in her throat. "Wannabe."

"Yeah, well," he said, shrugging. "Sam said something about you helping out with finding Kevin?"

"I'll have to do it remotely for a while, but I'll dig through what I can."

"That'd be a help. Thanks."

She looked at him for a long moment, then away. "I – well – I – it's – you know?"

He lifted a brow, as she looked at him, the feeling she couldn't express in her face, in her eyes. "Yeah."

He took a step forward, reaching out and pulling her into a hug. _The little sister he'd never wanted_. The memory of the words trickled through his thoughts. That wasn't exactly how it was. But it wasn't how it wasn't, either. She knew too much about him. And not enough. And he knew too much about her.

He dropped a kiss on the bright hair and let her go, and she picked up her bag, walking through the grey mists that swirled around and filled the spaces between the trees. He saw her half turn and lift a hand and then she disappeared in the illusions.

Turning back to the stairs, he walked down them slowly, inserting the key into the door and opening it. Inside, the rooms were warmly lit and comfortable, and he felt himself relaxing, just a bit.

He walked down to the war room and up the shallow flight to the library.

Sam pushed back his chair, getting to his feet, his face pensive. "Okay, look, you were right, I should've laid low, I know, I should've hung back, but I'm glad I was able –" He took a step back as Dean kept coming, hitting the back of his chair and stopping, his brother's arms around his neck in the middle of his apologetic explanation.

He let his arms creep around Dean, hugging him back, uncertain of what was going on. They were both on roller-coasters, he thought, neither of knowing what the fuck was going to happen in the next five minutes and half the time not knowing what was going on with the other either.

Dean let go and pushed him back a little, hands on his shoulders. "What do you say we go find our prophet?"

Sam stared as he turned away, shucking his coat and dropping it over a chair as he headed for the kitchen. _What the hell?_

"Uh … by find, do you mean … uh, get in the car and drive around?" he called to his brother's retreating footsteps.

"Yeah, that's what I mean," Dean's bellow carried down the hall back to the library.

"Huh."


	42. Chapter 42 The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

**Chapter 42 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam leaned his head against his hand, watching Dean moving around the room from under his brows and wondering if he'd meant what he'd said about leaving. The last couple of days, Dean hadn't said anything about it. He coughed again, feeling the warm, bloody taste in his mouth and spitting it into the tissue, scrunching it unlooked-at in his fist and tossing it into the waste-paper basket. He could feel the heat from his skin against his arm and he lifted his head tiredly, trying to make his eyes focus on the words on the pages in front of him again.

Dean felt his brother's attention shift and glanced over at him. In the last two days, Sam'd gone from half-functioning to barely functioning and neither of them had said a word about it. He wasn't so sure that just careering around the country in the car looking for Kevin randomly was such a good idea now. He wasn't sure of where to look, in any case.

The trill from his phone coincided with a beep from the laptop and he turned around, walking to the laptop as he yanked the cell from his pocket, seeing the same message on both devices.

"It's Kevin," he told Sam, clicking on the email at the top of the screen and on the video link it enclosed.

"Finally," Sam said, getting up and walking around the table, stopping for a moment as blackness closed around his vision then dissolved.

The link opened up a video file and Kevin's face filled the screen. Dean turned the sound up a little as the prophet began to speak.

"Sam, Dean, I set up some software on an anonymous, remote server so that a message would get to you in the event of my worst fears actually occurring. Actually, Dean, I got the idea from what you told me about that guy, Frank, and his message from the grave … but anyway, the message was supposed to be sent if I didn't reset it with a command once a week … and since you're watching this now … that means I didn't reset it this week."

Dean stared at the tired, hopeless face on the laptop's screen, feeling his pulse accelerate helplessly.

"There's only one reason I wouldn't reset it, and I guess we all know what that is," he said, looking away with a shrug. "Crowley must've gotten to me. I don't know how. Maybe we didn't know everything we needed to. Maybe we never knew enough. But the one thing I do know is that I won't break this time. I'm not sure how I know, but I do."

Sam exhaled softly as he listened to Kevin continuing. "I've been uploading all my notes, all the translations; I'll send the links separately, so that you can get all of it. You guys are going to have to try to figure out the rest." Kevin looked up at the small camera. "I'm sorry. I know it was my job. My responsibility. I don't know what could've happened, but I guess that I just wasn't prepared enough. I'm sorry."

He leaned forward and the video finished. The laptop beeped again as more emails came in.

Dean turned sharply, his arm sweeping over the table behind him, sending the books and notes and manuscripts crashing to the floor. "Dammit!"

_When it will be enough for you?_ The thought snuck in through the anger and hit him hard. _How many bodies do you need to climb over before you decide that it's not worth it?_ They weren't new thoughts, had been with him for years. It didn't make them any more palatable, any easier to hear. The job was the job – why the _FUCK_ was it up to him to determine how many sacrifices had to be made – how many he needed to make against the good of the rest of the population. _You can sacrifice yourself, but no one else_, his father's voice whispered in his mind and he tensed against it, driven down the stairs and across the war room, guilt and shame and pain crushing him inside.

Sam watched him walk away and turned back to the laptop, leaning on the side of the table as a flashpoint of heat filled his limbs and organs, the moan very soft, less than a breath. He eased himself down into the chair in front of the computer and opened the links Kevin had sent, leaning over to turn on the small printer that sat at the end of the table.

* * *

Dean walked down the hall, heading for the stairs at the end. Safest place in the world, he thought bitterly, remembering the kid's stark fear, the weariness that had shown in every look, every gesture. But no, they'd left him out there. How the _fuck_ had Crowley broken through those wardings without leaving a fucking trace of it? He wasn't some big archdemon, Lucifer's Knights or followers or whatever, just a straight out twisted human soul who'd been a fucking crossroads demon, a salesman, and had somehow gotten control of Hell. _How?_

He ran both hands through his hair as he made the next landing turn down and shook his head. Didn't matter how. Didn't matter at all. Keep to the facts. He had broken through and he had taken the prophet and maybe Kevin was alive – tortured, broken but still alive and translating Crowley's half of the tablet – or both halves – but maybe he hadn't broken and maybe he was dead.

Sam was failing, every day looking worse, sounding worse. The tablet half that they had had was gone. Kevin was gone. Even if they could find one of the other prophets, what chance was there of getting them up to speed? And for what purpose since they didn't have anything for them to read? They couldn't even go looking for Crowley since he'd changed whatever it was he'd changed that had stuffed up the summoning spell they'd had. And no possibility of finding another one, not now. It would take decades to go through the knowledge that lay inside this building. The catalogue helped a bit but looking for some obscure spell or ritual in the hundreds of thousands of books and texts and parchments the place held … he let out his breath in a long whistle of frustration. All the knowledge and no time.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, dialling Garth, and listened to the message again. Had something happened to the scrawny hunter? It was likely, he knew. Garth wasn't cut out for field work. And after the initial shock of seeing the man trying to take over role of researcher and liaison in what little remained of the scattered and naturally paranoid hunting community, he'd realised that he actually preferred the thought of Garth remaining in one location, feeding info to others, not risking his neck on the hunt. But this … this was smelling a lot like Frank's disappearance. Hunters didn't go missing and turn up again later, as a general rule. Luck ran out. And even without their agenda, Garth had been in the front line for revenge by a few things.

He looked at the list of numbers on the phone. Some of them he knew, in passing only, a couple from the roadhouse, a couple through Garth. The others were just a list of numbers Garth had passed on, hunters in various parts of the country. He didn't want to pull them in, didn't want to draw attention to them, but he needed information and he needed it fast. He dragged in a breath and dialled the first number, turning around when he reached the bottom of the stairs and starting up again.

He was on the fifth call when he reached the war room, and walked slowly up the stairs to the library.

"Yeah, I know you haven't seen, Kale, nobody has. What was he working on?" he asked impatiently. "Does anyone know? Alright, well, if you talk to him, could you just ask him to call in? Yuh."

He stopped at the table as he finished the call, leaning on the back of the chair. There was nothing. From anyone. No Garth. No signs or omens. No nothing.

Sam looked around. "Garth still MIA?"

"Yeah."

"Anyone found Mrs Tran?"

"No." Dean didn't want to think about Kevin's mother. Didn't want to think about the responsibility that fell on him for both of them.

"How about the other prophets in line?" Sam said tentatively. "I mean, if Kevin is, uh, dead, then won't one of them be … um … activated?"

Dean looked at him. "There's been no signs, at least none that any of the hunters we know have seen. Nothing."

He rubbed a hand over his face. "No one knows what Garth was even working on."

"Do you want to check it out?" Sam asked, a little reluctantly. It would slow down the search for the tablet, the new prophet, everything.

Dean heard the reluctance in Sam's voice, knew what caused it. The bottom line was that they had the same number of leads to finding Garth as they did everything else. A big, fat zero.

"No," he said finally, unable to meet his brother's eyes. "I got nowhere to start looking. Like everything else. No leads. No tablet. We got jack, Sam."

"Well," Sam said, lifting a thick pile of paper from the printer tray. "We got this."

"We should've moved him here," Dean said, not looking at the printouts, thinking of Kevin. "I shouldn't've left him out there, on his own."

"The boat seemed safe, Garth was there and it was a lot less likely that the demons or Crowley would happen on him there –" Sam said, brow creasing as he recognised his brother's expression.

"Unlikely," Dean said slowly. "Yeah, that's always a good benchmark of the odds, isn't it, Sam?"

Sam looked at the paper in his hand. They should've brought Kevin here, no doubt. At the time, it'd seemed like a good idea to keep them separated but Larry had told him, straight out, that this was the safest place. And he hadn't wanted to remember that because for the first time in a long, long time, he'd felt like this place could be their home. A place where they could both think. Both rest. Both remember what it felt like to be brothers again. He hadn't said anything because he hadn't wanted to lose that.

* * *

_**Santa Fe, New Mexico**_

"Wanna refill?"

The hard, drawling voice snapped the angel's head up and he turned to look at the waitress standing beside his table, coffee pot in hand, one brow arched up in bored query.

"Ah, yes, thank you," he said, flustered. "I seem to be acquiring a taste for it."

She glanced at him, her long, dark hair held back but one lock escaping and brushing a rounded cheek. She didn't really look like … anyone, Cas thought as she filled his cup.

"I'll be sure to cut you off before you start tap-dancing on the ceiling," she said, with a slow, one-sided smile. He stared at her.

"You know, I remember when you first discovered it," he said in a rush, not sure why he wanted to talk to her, talk to someone. "Before you learned to brew it, you just chewed the berries."

The waitress' eyes narrowed slightly as she looked back at him. "You been on the road awhile, huh?"

He ducked his head. "It feels like forever."

"Well, don't forget to take the blue pill sometime," she said, glancing over her shoulder at the cash register, her voice dropping slightly. "Listen, you wanna keep the table, you're gonna have to order something more than coffee."

"Of course," Cas said, looking around, the special on the table snagging his gaze. "I'll have the Smart-Heart, Beer-Battered Tempura Tempters."

She smiled and for a moment she didn't look anything like … anyone else. "Sure, that'll do something for the caffeine high," she said cheerfully. "Coming right up."

He watched her go. The scabs were itching again. It was a small price to pay for his invisibility, he thought, scratching at them discreetly through the business shirt he wore. No one could see him, not even the highest ranked of Heaven. And while that situation remained, he would be safe. The tablet would be safe. The Winchesters would be … not safe, he thought, looking out through the wide, plate-glass windows. Safer, perhaps. A little safer without him around.

"Here you go," the waitress put the plate down in front of him.

"Thank you."

She hesitated for a moment and he looked up at her questioningly.

"You know, you seem like a nice guy," she said abruptly, looking at the order pad in her hand. "Whatever it is, it'll work itself out. Just the way it works, right?"

"Ah, right," he agreed politely.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam made a noise in his throat, and Dean looked up tiredly. They'd been reading Kevin's notes for four hours and so far, hadn't found a single thing that had moved them one inch further in any direction. There was a lot of filler in the Word of God, he thought, blinking as he took his brother's furrowed brow.

"What?"

"I don't know," Sam said, chewing absently on the inside of his lip as he stared at the symbol that punctuated the comments in the pages he was reading. "This looks … familiar. Really familiar."

He turned the page around and pushed it across the table. Dean looked down at it. There were several similar ones on the pages he'd been reading.

"Familiar – how?"

"Well, this is what Kevin's been using to show the notations of Metatron, within the text of the demon tablet," Sam said slowly.

"Okay?"

"And I've seen it before." Sam closed his eyes, trying to force the memory back. "A long time ago."

"How long?"

"I don't know," he said, opening his eyes and staring at the page. "It was on …"

The memory came back as a flash, sharp and bright and in full colour. The classroom had been small, the school had been small. The teacher had been Native American, a tall, graceful woman with thick black hair that had reached down to her hips. Dean had been sick. His father had been hunting something, in the wild hills and mountains outside of the small town. Something that wasn't dangerous to the people, but that was dangerous … somehow. In his mind's eye, he looked out the school room window and saw the towering, snow-covered peaks outside.

"We were in a town, in the mountains," he said quietly. "You were sick, Dad was looking for a –"

"Ghost-dancer," Dean supplied, remembering the town, remembering his father's hunt. "You were in eighth grade."

"Right," Sam said, shutting his eyes again. "It was a school project. A history of the people who'd lived there. It was on their homes, on the pictures …" He got up abruptly, walking fast out of the library, his half-closed but, Dean noticed, not the slightest hint of clumsiness in his brother at this moment, as he rounded the table end and walked into the hall leading to the staircase. Dean got up and followed him, lengthening his stride to catch up as Sam started down the stairs.

"Where are you going?"

"There's a section on Native American lore, on the second level," Sam answered, gesturing vaguely down the stairs. "They were a tiny offshoot of the Ute," he added, half-running down the steps now. "And when all the other nations were moved out of the mountains to the reservations, they stayed … the town – do you remember the name of the town?"

Dean thought back. His father had been hunting the ghost-dancer, warned by a shaman of the local people that she had to be found. He remembered that John had left, telling him he'd be back that night, but he hadn't come back for three days. He'd managed to catch a cold or the flu or a bug of some description and had been lucky to get on and off the bed. Sam had been studying … something, he thought, something that'd taken his attention fully. It had been in southern Colorado, close by the border of Utah. The mountains had towered over the valley. It'd been cold, early spring. He remembered almost everything, but not the name. That was usually the least important thing He shook his head.

"No, too long ago," he said, following Sam as he strode along the hall to the much larger library on that level.

He slowed as he watched Sam walk straight to one stack, going straight to a single book and pulling it out, his eyes glittering slightly as he flipped through the pages. It was freaky to watch. It reminded him of his brother's certainty, led by something not in his genetics, but in his blood. In his mind. Years ago.

"Here," Sam said, slamming the open book down on the table. "They were there from 1500 AD, according to the history, but the teacher said they'd been there longer. A lot longer."

Dean leaned past him, looking down at the book. At the top of the page, a line drawing showed a rock, with the petroglyph drawn onto it; a circle intersected by three others, with a triangle in the centre and a hexagon held within that. "That's the symbol? The same symbol?"

Sam nodded. "It was a petroglyph, a territorial marker. It was on the mountains, carved into the trees along the edges of their borders." Sam scanned the passage beneath it. "In the local dialect, the symbol meant 'messenger of God'."

Dean looked at him. "Or … scribe of God?"

"The town is Ignacio," Sam said, his finger stabbing at the book. "Is that it? Is that where we were?"

"Could be," Dean said. He didn't remember the name of the town they'd been in. Too long ago. Too many other towns, other schools, other hunts.

"We have to go," Sam said, shutting the book and heading for the hall again. "We have to go there now!"

"Hold up a minute, Sammy," Dean called, following him back up the stairs. "What the hell makes you think that we're gonna find anything there?"

"Because I have a feeling, a hunch, I – I don't know what to call it," Sam stopped on the steps, turning around. "I know there's an answer there."

Dean felt his stomach dip. "A feeling … like a vision-kind of feeling?"

"No!" Sam snapped, turning away. "Not like that. You said it yourself, we've got no leads, no prophet, we can't figure this out on our own – this is – this is something, Dean, I can't explain it any more than that. What if he is there? Has been there, all this time? He wrote the damned tablets!"

"You think we're going to find the scribe of God in this town?" Dean stopped, looking up the stairs at his brother's disappearing heels. "Doing what?"

"I don't know," Sam said, glancing back over his shoulder as he slowed down slightly. "I just know that we have to go."

Behind him, Dean closed his eyes. When he was all fired up, the symptoms – or illness – or whatever the hell was wrong with him – disappeared. He could still feel the heat, radiating off his little brother like a furnace, and he wondered how much energy all this took out of Sam, energy he wasn't putting back. But he admitted to himself unwillingly, it was better than watching Sam swaying and running into things and coughing up blood.

It was about an eleven hour drive, he thought, reaching the library and seeing Sam's shirttails disappearing down the hall that led to his room. He glanced at his watch. They could stop for the night in Rocky Ford, not too long a haul in a single sitting. Get some sleep and be there before lunch tomorrow. Maybe it would help.

* * *

_**Heaven**_

In the room that was all light and glass and reflections, Naomi sat behind the desk, eyes narrowed and face tight as she stared at the angels in front of her.

"You can't find him," she said, her voice low and rasping.

"We think that he's probably marked himself permanently with the wards," Aion said expressionlessly. "We can tell where he's been, can follow his … track … but no, we cannot get ahead of him, cannot see him, only the ripples of his passing."

The auburn-haired angel closed her eyes. "What about the Winchesters?"

Castiel would come out of hiding for them, she knew. He would come to save them if they were being held at the point of death.

"We haven't been able to see them since they left Beloit."

"That is not what I wanted to hear!" she snapped furiously. "You were supposed to keep track of them, so that we wouldn't be in this position!"

Aion bent his head. There was nothing he could do about losing the two men, who'd disappeared into thin air in the middle of a small highway heading west. Disappeared from their thoughts, at least. He hadn't been there to see if they'd actually disappeared from the earthly plane.

At the back of his mind was the slowly growing conviction that neither Heaven nor Hell really cared about the jobs they'd been assigned, guardians and keepers of knowledge, tempters and punishers of sin. The lines had been blurring between them for the last thousand years and power and control was all that he'd been able to see around him, not love or obedience, not wisdom or tolerance or … anything.

"Are there any places he's been more than once?" she asked him.

"A couple," he said uncertainly. "We've found signs of him twice in Oregon, and three times in New Mexico. Why?"

"Because Castiel has been with humans for a long time now, and he is not entirely angel, not any more," she said, looking past him, her chin resting on her hand. "He will seek to connect, even on the most superficial levels. And he might not realise he's doing it."

Her gaze snapped up to him. "New Mexico. We'll search it until we find the one he has been talking to."

* * *

_**Amherst, Massachusetts**_

Kevin looked up at the hollow banging of the cabin door. He wasn't feeling right. Something was missing but he couldn't remember … couldn't remember what it was. He walked slowly to the door, relaxing fractionally as he heard the deep-timbered voice, edged with impatience outside.

"Kevin? Come on, it's us, open up."

There was supposed to be a protocol, Kevin thought, the uneasiness returning. They'd put it in place when he'd started to get worried. A knock, he thought. Dean's idea. A way for him to tell if it was them or not. He couldn't remember the exact conversation now.

The pounding on the metal door got louder. "I'm freezing out here!"

He opened the door to see Dean standing there. "Come on, man, it's me."

Point and fire, he thought, squirting half the gun's contents over the man standing in front of him.

Dean looked at him sourly. "Now it's wet me."

"You forgot the knock! What's the point of having a secret knock if you don't use it!?" Kevin snapped at him.

"Sorry, Kevin." Sam appeared from behind the wall and Kevin's finger tightened on the trigger automatically, soaking him mid-sentence. He shook off the droplets and held up a canvas duffle. "We got it."

Kevin unwound the chain that held the door handle to the wall next to the door and Dean stepped through, taking the duffle from his brother as he passed him.

"We caught a tip that Crowley was moving his earth-side operations, so we, uh, laid ourselves an awesome trap," he said, heading for the main cabin and dropping the bag on the table. "And it worked."

He unzipped the bag and pulled out a broken piece of stone as Kevin watched them both suspiciously. Holding it up, Dean smiled. "We got the other half of the tablet."

"What?" Kevin breathed, stepping closer to them as he stared at it.

"It's the light at the end of your tunnel, kid," Dean said, holding it out to him. "Don't say we never gotcha nothin'."

"Holy crap." Kevin took it, feeling the conduit flutter open in his mind. "We can get the third trial," he said, moving to the work table down the cabin. "We can finally close the gates of Hell on Crowley's ass forever."

Sitting down, he bent over the tablet and picked up a pen, his hand smoothing out the page of the notebook under it automatically.

"Sounds good to me," Sam said. "So … we digging up the other half of that thing or what?"

"Don't need to," Kevin said, gesturing distractedly at the wall of notes and diagrams that covered the cabin wall.

* * *

One of the reasons he'd acquired the house had been for the multiple level cellars, and Crowley sat in the lower level, surrounded by the emptiness as he stared at the boy hunched over the small table in the middle of that stone-flagged space.

_Virtual reality_, he mused. _Hell-style_. Nothing more required than a push into Kevin's head and he had a cast of thousands and sets that made de Mille's seem like mall holiday pantomimes.

Three trials, he thought, straightening in his chair. And the prophet was busily working on the third with his helpful little push.

He'd tried everything when he'd gotten Kevin here. The usual rounds of torture, dismemberment, disembowelling, flaying, acid, everything physical and psychological he could think of. He'd tried loved ones going through the same routine. But for some reason he hadn't been able to ascertain just yet, Kevin had resisted it all. And he didn't want to do it for real. Just inside his head was enough. Not one of the prophets he'd gathered before had struck him as being either as intelligent or as malleable as the boy.

Hell's trick of renewing everything every twelve hours had helped. He'd scrubbed Kevin's mind clean and started again. This time the name of the game was … Persuasion. Persuade him he was safe, in the iron boat, with the wards and guards surrounding him. Persuade him that Dean and Sam were at the ready. Persuade him that nothing as nasty as the King of Hell making an appearance had ever really happened.

And it was working. After a fashion, he thought. Kevin wasn't as forthcoming with the Winchesters as he'd thought he'd be. But perhaps with the whole paranoia thing happening, that was to be expected. He was translating. That was the main thing.

And he'd let a lot slip, in the occasional dialogues with Sam and Dean. That Sam had successfully completed the first two trials. It wasn't really a worry, so many favourites came down at the post or just before. And Sam wasn't looking well. Not well at all. He didn't know why but the trials appeared to be taking their toll on Moose.

He got up and stretched. At the table in front of him, Kevin scribbled on, oblivious to his actual surroundings, his eyes open and on the notebook, his mind convinced of the illusion that embraced him. All well and good.

His spy had told him that Naomi had upped the ante in the search for Cas, the rebellious angel eluding her operatives. He smiled. He would watch her. And she would lead him to Cas eventually. She was too uptight to make a very good Intelligence leader, he thought. Too … bureaucratic to understand that sometimes things were hidden in plain sight. You just had to know your subject and know where to look.

* * *

_**US-71 S, Colorado**_

Dean glanced across at Sam. He was still fiddling with the unwrapped burger and fries bag in his lap.

"How long since you ate?"

Sam looked over at him, shrugging. "Uh … yesterday –"

"Three days, Sam," Dean said. "Last time I saw you swallow food was three days ago."

"I can't eat," Sam said quietly, looking down at the bag and pitching it into the back in frustration. "I can't. I know you're worried, man, I'm worried too. But this isn't a cold or a fever, or whatever it is you're supposed to feed. I'm not going to get better. This is all a part of it."

"A part of what?"

"The trials. Those first two – they're not just something I did. They did something to me, they're still doing something to me. They're changing me. And it's not going to get better. Not until I can start the third trial."

"Trial?" Dean shot a look at him. "You can hardly stay on your feet. I know we're on the rails here, Sam. I know there's no way out but through, but we gotta do something about this or you're not going to last until the third trial."

"There's nothing to do, Dean," Sam said, looking out the window beside him. "We talked about this – no amount of tests or doctors or food or sleep is going to do anything."

"How do you know that?"

"I can feel it," Sam said softly, looking at his hands. "In my veins – every blood vessel in my body is burning, all the time now. Something is burning up in me, I don't know what, but it's been accelerating the last few weeks. It's why I can't eat. Or sleep for more than an hour at a time. It's why I have to keep going, even if it makes no sense to you – it makes sense to me."

"I can't sit here and watch you dying and do nothing, Sam."

Sam turned to him. "I don't think that's what's happening. I can't make you believe that. I can't prove it. I can't even speculate about it. But I think this was meant to happen."

"That's not reassuring me," Dean said, staring at the road.

There'd been a lot of times in his life when he'd felt helpless, pushed and pulled by the forces surrounding them that were just out of sight, that'd thwarted every counter he'd been able to think of, or were just too fucking big to fight against, no matter how hard he'd tried. Times when he'd watched as people had died, had made choices that had led them to their deaths. Good people, who'd trusted in him. People he hadn't been able to save. He'd never had to do it in slow motion, though. Never had to sit around and watch his brother get weaker and weaker, watch him disappearing right in front of him. He wasn't sure how long he could take that.

"You remember that place on the Gulf, Dean?"

He turned to look at Sam, feeling his stomach plummet as he saw his brother's slack expression, eyes half-closed and sweat standing out on his face, his cheeks bright red and heat rash standing out on his neck.

"What place?" he said, the words crawling out past the fear in his throat.

"I was ten, I think," Sam continued dreamily. "We were there for a week while Dad talked to some people. There was a long beach and I got stung by a jellyfish."

He remembered. Sam's shrill screams of pain and his frantic attempts to peel the stingers off, his fingers and hands raw and blistered with the poisons by the time he'd got them all off and Sam back to the small motel they'd been staying in, and had washed his brother's legs down with vinegar.

"Yeah."

"I remember your face. You were so scared," Sam mumbled, eyes closing. "Made me more scared, then you must have realised that, I think, 'cause you got all gruff and dragged me back to the room and kept telling me to shut up and sit still." His mouth curved up in a slight smile. "I didn't know that you got stung too. Didn't pay attention til I saw you trying to clean the guns."

Dean frowned, glancing at him again. "Where'd that come from?"

"I dunno," Sam muttered. "I keep remembering things."

He didn't like the vagueness in Sam's voice. Or the heat that he could feel radiating out from him. Or any of the goddamned things that were happening, he thought sourly.

* * *

_**Santa Fe, New Mexico**_

Naomi stood in the restaurant, against the wall, watching the people eating, drinking, talking, walking, moving around, all oblivious to her.

Castiel had returned three times to this place in his driven wandering. It wasn't for the food, she thought, nose wrinkling up in distaste as she watched the meals placed in front of the patrons. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at each one of the people who were dressed in the bright red uniforms. Someone who'd been there all the time. Someone he could reach out to, if only in a small way, to connect to the humans he'd become so fond of. Someone …

* * *

_**Amherst, Massachusetts**_

Kevin looked up from the tablet and rubbed his forehead. He was alone on the boat, the conduit blocked, his hand cramped and sore. He looked down at his notes. The tablet's information was not linear, he'd told Dean, months ago. And that fact was becoming more and more clear to him as the pieces began to mesh together to form a whole that was intoxicatingly vivid. Crowley had no idea, he thought. No idea of the power of the information, of the work on the tablet. The demon who prided himself on his extensive vision had failed to see the enormity of the power potential in what he'd held.

He looked vaguely around the cabin. There was no food and he was starving. And at the back of his mind, doubts were nagging at him. He looked up at the banging on the metal door. Again, Dean had failed to use the knock. The man wasn't stupid or careless. He wouldn't have lived long if he had been, Kevin thought.

He got up and walked down through the cabin and the hall to the access door, opening it and standing aside as they walked in past him. Neither said anything about being let in without so much as squirt from the water gun. Kevin looked down at the devil's trap that covered the floor in front of the door. From a distance, it looked intact. From a distance.

"How you doing?" Dean said, putting the six-pack down on the table and pulling one out.

"Slow," Kevin said, shrugging. "I'm not sure I'm getting the translation exactly right."

"Isn't that impossible?" Sam turned to look at him as he walked past them and sat down at the table. "I mean, you're the only one who can read it."

"I need food," Kevin said, looking down at the notes he'd scrawled that morning, glancing back up at the brothers from under his brows.

Dean turned to look at Sam, shrugging slightly.

"What do you want?" Sam turned to the table.

Kevin wrote down a list and handed it to the younger Winchester, getting up again and following them down to the door.

"Alright, barbequed ribs, mashed potatoes –" Sam read through the list as he walked up to the door.

"That's garlic mashed potato," Kevin corrected him tersely.

"Garlic mashed potatoes," Sam repeated. "Mixed greens with … baby lettuce … cornbread, and … Pad Thai."

"Garth says there's a good little place on the other side of town," Kevin said, looking at them.

The brothers exchanged a glance and Dean shrugged. "What the hell, kid's been working hard."

They walked out and Kevin locked the door behind them. Not in a million years, he thought, feeling a frisson run up his spine. The question was, what was he going to do about it?

* * *

_**Ignacio, Colorado**_

The Two Rivers Hotel and Casino was an imposing building, three stone-built storeys under a steeply-pitched tile roof, with the wide plain, rising foothills and snowy peaks as its backdrop, it seemed a place that had been forgotten in time. Dean pulled into the almost-empty parking lot and looked around as the engine ticked softly in the silence.

"Not the high season," he said distractedly, looking at Sam.

His brother nodded, pulling his jacket on and opening the door. Dean saw him squint as the bright sunshine hit his face, watched him stagger slightly and lean against the car.

_I need you to watch out for me._

The memory of his brother's face, vehement and unfocussed came back to him suddenly.

_Yeah, I always do._

Sam had wanted a promise and he'd given it, knowing he would break it. Knowing he wouldn't be able to keep it, no matter what happened. Now, that choice, that decision had been removed from his control.

He rubbed a hand over his face and got out of the car, walking around to the trunk to get their gear. He'd said that his body was burning, he thought distantly, pulling out the duffles and locking the trunk again. _No_, he corrected himself, that his _veins_ were burning. Was that different, he wondered? Was he right, something was being burned out of him?

There were no prizes for guessing what the something was. If God had wanted to ensure that only one man could complete the task of closing the gates, he guessed that he might do whatever was needed to make sure that the man was the right one for the job.

Following Sam into the bar, he wasn't exactly surprised to see that it was as empty as the parking lot had been. Tables and chairs filled the space between the polished L-shaped bar and the lobby of the hotel, a couple of slots sitting inconspicuously against the square columns. Not a speck of dust anywhere. Not a single sign that anyone had been in there for – for a long time, Dean thought, glancing at the machines. They were eighties vintage.

"Nice place," he commented. Sam looked around disinterestedly and shrugged.

The lobby counter was empty and Dean tapped the bell. The town wasn't big but even small towns had a few people who craved a drink through the day. He wondered if the exclusion was deliberate – either on the hotel's part, or the town's.

A man walked out of the office behind the counter, tall, a long fall of black hair incongruous against the crisp western suit and white shirt, the tanned skin and dark eyes expressionless.

"Good morning," Dean said. "We'd like a room?"

For a long moment, the man looked at him. His gaze flicked to Sam and Dean wondered if the guy was gonna turn them down.

"Here," he added. "Please."

The manager turned away, picking up a register book and putting it . Dean looked at his brother. Sam didn't seem to have noticed, his brow creased up, one hand lifting to his ear as he turned away.

The sound was odd, Sam thought, looking around for a possible source. Like someone striking a tuning fork in the upper registers, he could almost feel it in his teeth, the connection between ear and jaw reverberating slightly as he turned his head. It vanished a moment later and he turned back to the lobby counter.

"Did you hear that?" he asked Dean.

Dean glanced at him, looking back at the manager nervously. The man was staring at Sam, brows drawn together.

"He's got the flu," Dean said quickly. The manager looked back at him and he ducked his head, completing the details in front of him. Surrounded by the weird, he thought uneasily.

He took the key and picked up the bags, checking that Sam was following as he headed for the stairs.

* * *

_**Santa Fe, New Mexico**_

Naomi looked around the restaurant, her gaze flicking over the bodies and the blood, sprayed over the walls, to return to the woman sitting in front of her, half-sprawled against the long counter, the blood a darker shade against the red shirt she wore.

"Please, don't hurt me," the waitress said, looking up. "I didn't do anything!"

"No, of course not, dear," the angel said, closing her fist slowly. The woman gasped, as pain rippled and gouged her from the inside and a thread of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

"Can you pray? I want you to think about the man you served here, the one you talk to," she said quietly, crouching down beside the woman as she loosened her fingers. "Do you know who I mean?"

The woman shook her head hopelessly. "I see a lot of men."

"This one is quiet and has deep blue eyes," Naomi said. "He is very polite and a little strange."

The woman nodded suddenly, remembering him, and Naomi smiled. "That's good."

She closed her fingers again, tightening them savagely. "See his face in your mind, and pray to him, dear, to come and help you."

The woman's eyes were screwed shut, her face spasming in pain as the agony increased.

"Help me," she whispered.

* * *

_**Manhattan, New York**_

Castiel closed his eyes, seeing her face, distorted in pain, hearing her voice in his mind, her pleading.

A trap, a part of him realised distantly. She was bait because he'd talked to her.

Then it didn't matter, he thought. He had brought it onto her, through his weakness, his desire to connect. He would have to go.

The curtains next to the table fluttered a little as he disappeared from the small table. At the next table, the old woman who'd been watching him absently, thinking what a nice-looking man he was, dropped her cup in astonishment.

* * *

_**Santa Fe, New Mexico**_

"Let her go," Cas said, staring down at the woman.

"Gladly," Naomi replied, squeezing her hand tight. Cas saw the woman's eyes fix in place, open and unseeing as a gout of blood spilled from her mouth.

He turned to auburn-haired angel, his face bitter. "We were supposed to be their shepherds."

Naomi shrugged. "Not always, Castiel. When our Father commanded it, we were warriors and followed Gabriel into the land of Egypt. Every firstborn, even the firstborn cattle were slain in one night. We lay ruin to Sodom and Gomorrah, we brought down the walls of Jericho and slew eighteen thousand in Assyria – did you ever doubt that angels are not the weapons of Heaven?"

Cas looked away. _I thought angels were supposed to be guardians_. Dean had looked at him challengingly. _Not dicks._

_Read the Bible. Angels are warriors of God. I am a soldier_, he'd said told the man. It was true. Had been then, was now. The unthinking, unquestioning swords of God.

"The weapon does not make the decision to strike of its own accord, Naomi," he said to her. "Who is directing you?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Where is the angel tablet, Castiel?"

"It's safe," Castiel said. "That's all that should concern you. Safe from everyone."

"Where is it!?"

"In the words of a good friend of mine … bite me," Cas said, smiling at her.

"Oh, we will bite, Castiel," Naomi said bitterly. "Have no fear of that."

She turned to Aion and Araphiel, her voice hard and clipped. "Search back along his route. He must have hidden it along the way. Find it."

* * *

_**Ignacio, Colorado**_

Dean walked into the room, glancing at Sam as he closed the door. "Regular tourist mecca, we got here. We're the only guests in this whole place; last entry in the registry was in '06 –"

"Hey," Sam said, cutting him off. "Hey."

"Hey."

"I remembered something else."

"Yeah?"

"The rats. I remembered the rats," Sam said, rolling restlessly onto his side to look at Dean. "You remember them?"

Dean looked down at the pamphlets he was still holding, courtesy of the lobby rack. "Yeah, Sam, I remember them."

"That was my fault," Sam said abruptly. "I made us go down there. But you told Dad and Jim it was your idea."

Dean sighed. These trips down memory lane were not helping. "You were nine."

"I was a pain-in-the-butt kid brother," Sam said, his voice softer, muffled again. "When the tunnel filled up … and they all came out …"

"Sam –" He really didn't want to think about the goddamned rats again. Or his brother barely conscious on the top of that stone plinth. Or the flashlight dying because he'd fallen in the water and the battery had been soaked. Or the feel of them, using him as a life-ring as the water had kept rising.

Sam opened his eyes and sat up, looking at him, the confusion gone from his face. "I remember you had nightmares for a while after that."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, our childhood, man, good times."

"I remember you lied to Dad."

"Stop it, okay?" he said, getting to his feet. "I'm gonna go check out the museum and trading post."

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding as he swung his legs off the edge of the bed. "I'm gonna follow the creepy hotel manager …"

"No," Dean told him, stepping across between the beds and putting a hand on his shoulder quellingly. "What's going on?"

"With what?"

"With your ambition to become Miss Colorado 2013," he said in exasperation. "With the blasts from the past, Sam. Why are you remembering all this shit now?"

"I don't know," Sam said, looking up at him. "It's just coming back, more and more. You taught me how to swim, you and Dad, that summer we were stuck in Jersey, you remember that?"

Dean looked at him. Sam had been six. Their father had three broken ribs, a cracked pelvis and a broken wrist from a tussle with a ghost that had been resistant to being laid to rest. They'd spent ten weeks in some crappy cabin near the shore and it'd been stinking hot and humid as hell and he'd spent every day in the water, his brother heartbroken that he wasn't allowed to do more than paddle. He'd taught him to float and dog-paddle, and Sam had followed every instruction with a ferocious obedience. He'd been swimming pretty well by the time their father could move around easily again.

"Yeah, hot summer," he said noncommittally. Sam shook his head, the clarity vanishing from his eyes. Dean's brows drew together as he watched exhaustion crash over his brother again.

"Yeah, well, no chasing after anyone," he said. "You get some rest."

Sam considered it for a moment and nodded. "Yeah, I can do that too." He fell back on the bed, eyes closing instantly. Dean looked down at him, the faint frown still there.

What the fuck was going on with him, he wondered uneasily as he walked out of the room. The trip was going backwards, he'd noticed that. Thirteen, then ten, nine then six.

He walked down the stairs and out of the hotel, following the street to the museum, three blocks down.

It wouldn't be so bad if Sam was sticking to the good memories, he thought distractedly as he strode down the street. But their childhood had some pretty bad ones as well and he couldn't think of any good reason to drag those back into the light.

He pushed open the door to the single storey stone building and walked in, shunting thought and feeling aside as he looked around.

* * *

Hot. He was unbearably hot. Burning. From the inside out. He couldn't breathe, his lungs filling with hot liquid, the taste rising up his throat.

Sam thrashed on the bed, the pillow and sheets soaked through with the sweat that poured off him, his t-shirt clinging to him.

_He was awake, listening in the dark. Beside him, he could feel his brother's warmth, but Dean was asleep. His father's voice sounded from the next room, harsh and afraid._

"_Jesus, Jim! What am I going to do?"_

"_Nothing," Jim Murphy said quietly, so quietly that he almost couldn't hear him. "You're gonna look after them and we'll find out where the thing is hiding and we'll take it down, John, but it's not the child's fault and it's not even really Mary's fault it happened."_

"_I know that!" John Winchester almost shouted. "Why us? Why her? What did it want? What does it want?"_

"_I don't know."_

"_What could it do to him, that blood?"_

"_I don't know that either," Jim said slowly. "There's nothing even in the Church's heretical texts – not even a hint of it. I don't know that we'll find a precedent for this."_

Sam listened in the dark. At three, he hadn't known what he was hearing, only registering his father's fear and the worry in Jim's voice. With his adult mind, he knew what they were talking about.

He'd lived with it all his remembered life. He'd had no idea of that until Jessica had been murdered and all his dreams of a normal life had been overturned and slashed to ribbons in one fiery night, his brother's arms pulling him out of the small apartment, the sirens and the shouting and the flames that had lit everything up. He'd known there was something about him, though. Something different. Something that fought endlessly against his father and brother and their life. Something that slumbered until his twenty-second birthday and then lit him up with levels of difference that had shaken and terrified him.

_Freak_. _Cambion_. _Demon child_. _Monster_. He'd thought them all in the years since he'd discovered exactly what had been done to him. He'd seen the same thoughts in his brother's face, not often, not willingly, but there, and those times had cut through him like a white-hot knife, Dean's misery and his own entwined and separate and no way for them to ever find that closeness that had characterised the way they'd been when it'd been the three of them on the road forever.

* * *

Dean looked around the simple store. Mostly tourist stuff, a few old photographs. The man serving behind the counter was Ute, long, greying black hair and seamed, brown face.

"The _Nuciu_, the People, came to this land more than eighteen centuries ago," he said slowly. "It was not an easy land, then or now."

"How is it that you stayed, when the others went?"

The man smiled dryly. "When Ouray went to see President Hayes, in 1880, he did not speak for us. None cared or wanted the land. The leader of the People told them this place was the home of the Great Spirit's sacred messenger, that it would protect them, would give them what they needed as long as they cared for it and made offerings, their blessings would be many."

Dean's attention sharpened. "And what were the offerings? What did the Great Spirit's sacred messenger ask for?"

"Stories," the man said. Dean turned around to look at him.

"That was all," he said, seeing the doubt in the younger man's face. "There is a trail, from the end of the road, up into the hills. Many people take it. Few understand what it is they see when they look back. You might be one of those few."

"A trail?"

The man nodded and walked out from behind the counter, moving to the door. "I am closing up now."

Dean raised a brow as he walked past him. "End of the road?"

The man nodded and closed the door behind him. He heard the snick of the lock being turned and glanced back, the store's Closed sign flipping over decisively.

It was a confirmation of some sort, he thought, turning and walking back toward the hotel. The Great Spirit's sacred messenger. All the biblical texts called Metatron the Messenger. Or the Voice. Or the Scribe. The one who talked to God and passed on whatever information he was supposed to. Kevin had told them about the farewell note, written into the demon tablet. If the angel had just decided to drop out, would he have picked a tiny tribe to live with, in the middle of nowhere? Possibly, Dean thought. If he thought he needed to hide. Certainly no one had twigged to his location over the last couple of thousand years.

He saw the trailhead and turned off, boots lifting puffs of dirt as the land began to climb slowly.

The countryside was silent, not even a far-off plane disturbing the peace. On the sun-warmed trail, barely visible at times, scattered with thin vegetation and loose rock, he felt a little of the tension of the last few weeks dissipating reluctantly. Too many balls up in the air, he thought distantly, watching the ground at his feet. Crowley. The angels. Cas and the angel tablet. Kevin and the demon tablet. Garth. And Sam, always Sam, deteriorating before his eyes. He dragged in a deep breath as he reached the peak of the low hill, turning to look back at the town.

For a long moment, he didn't see the pattern. When he did notice it, it leapt out at him, the streets and buildings, the lower hills and ponds. The entire town, and beyond to the edges of the open country, had been precisely designed, exactly laid out.

In the shape of a sigil. An Enochian sigil. The town was a sigil of deflection.

No wonder the fucking angels never saw it, he thought, the corner of his mouth lifting very slightly as he looked at it. No demon would've seen it either. The scribe or voice or messenger had been thorough. And Sam was right, he realised. Metatron was here. Still here, after all this time. Somewhere within the borders of that sigil.


	43. Chapter 43 The Guardian of Conscience

**Chapter 43 The Guardian of Conscience**

* * *

_**Ignacio, Colorado**_

Sam woke abruptly, plucking the damp shirt away from his skin as his face screwed up with the sour smell of sweat that had soaked it. He needed to find the angel, he thought, standing up and swaying slightly as the room spun lazily around him. Needed to find him now.

He pulled off the t-shirt, dropping it on the floor and grabbing a clean shirt from the duffle beside the bed. He could hear something, high and jittery and strange. He had to find the angel. Had to start the trial. Had to.

The hotel was silent. Eerily silent, except for the noise. The one that he only partly heard in his ears.

The hall was lit by wall sconces, positioned precisely at his eye level and he lifted an arm as he staggered past one, the light spearing into his eyes, shredding the little focus he had. Turning the corner, he looked down another long, narrow corridor, lit on both sides by more of the bright lights, the walls shifting and blurring in his vision, the end and the elevator doors advancing and retreating in an unsettling manner. Had they come up on the elevator or the stairs, he wondered irrelevantly?

He was halfway down when the elevator gave a discreet 'ting' and the doors opened. Wheeling awkwardly into a small side hall, he pressed himself tightly against the wall, holding his breath as he listened to the sound of footsteps and the squeak of cart wheels approaching. He couldn't fight, could hardly see.

The footsteps stopped, and there was a soft thud. Peering cautiously out around the corner, Sam watched the manager shifting packages from the cart to the piles of boxes already stacked up in front of one of the guest rooms. The footsteps and the squeaky wheel started again as the man walked back to the lift, and he let out his breath as he heard the doors close and the machinery start up.

The noise, a high-pitched, grating whine in his ears, was getting louder. His teeth ached from it and he set them against each other, pushing off the wall to get back to the corridor.

In the small recessed doorway to the room, dozens of boxes and packages, large and small, had been stacked. Sam dropped to his knees, alternating between a tight squint and opening his eyes wide as he tried to read the labels affixed to the ones on the top, the light from the wall above him brightening and fading as the noise increased. He looked at the box in front of him and pulled off the tape, ripping the flaps of the cardboard box as he struggled to get it open. Under the packing, several books were nested. The top one was a hardback, a dark blue cover with gold-foil printing. Sam lifted the book out and brought it closer to his face. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist. Stamped on the cover. He glanced at the book beneath. Another novel. And beneath that several more. Two were classics, the others popular fiction. What the hell?

His teeth and jaw were hurting. The bones of his skull were hurting. He put the book back in the box and lurched to his feet, looking at the door of the room. It swam in and out of his vision and he turned around, almost falling headlong as he leaned forward before his feet had caught up with the intention to move.

Ringing. Grating. Whining. Bright. Dim. Heat. And more heat, flooding up through him and sucking the strength from his muscles, the control from his nerves. Demon fever, he thought incoherently, bouncing off the wall to the right hand side of the corridor, his feet tangling as he veered diagonally across the hall and lifted a hand to push off before he hit the other side, weaving from side to side.

He had to tell Dean. It was a sign. The noise was a sign. The books were a sign. The angel was close, he could feel it in his head, in his teeth, in the spaces behind his eyes.

He opened the door to the room, slamming it into his shoulder as he tried to close it before he'd gotten through, swinging around and hearing it shut behind him. _Dean. Call Dean_. The phone was in his hand, and he caught the first burble of the cell as it dutifully called the number he'd pressed, but darkness and silence swallowed him up before he heard the voice at the other end.

* * *

_**Santa Fe, New Mexico**_

"There is no trace of the tablet along the route he took," Aion said tersely to his superior.

Naomi turned to look at Castiel. "Where is it, Castiel? Why are you keeping it to yourself when you know it belongs in Heaven?"

Cas looked up at her tiredly. "I don't know that," he said coldly. "I don't know who you are, or what interests you serve. I don't know why killing humanity and the seraphim under your protection has become standard procedure. What I do know is that I will not let it fall into the hands of those who will misuse it. It was not meant for angels."

"I'm just going to have to pull you apart, aren't I?" she said, and looking into her eyes, Castiel suddenly realised that the prospect did not make her flinch. No remorse or mercy existed in the storm-wrack irises or behind them.

She could do what she would, he thought. He had been broken and mended so many times now that it was questionable if anyone could even find all the pieces again, let alone put them back together. He had regrets, sorrows. He would regret not being able to tell his friends what they had meant to him. What he'd learned from them.

The gunshot was deafening and Araphiel dropped instantly, light filling every corner of the room as the angel's spirit burst from the vessel and died, the light in the room fading to nothing.

Naomi's head snapped up as the second shot took Aion in the shoulder, the seraphim falling sideways to the floor.

"Naomi … darling," Crowley said, lowering the automatic as he smiled at her. "Miss me?"

"How did you find us?"

"Oh, I've been watching you for a while now," Crowley said dismissively. "Pays to keep up with current events." He looked at the gun. "Do you like it? I had my R&D people melt down one of your angel blades, cast it into bullets. Seems to do the trick."

"How dare you!" she said frigidly, staring at him.

"I'm the daringest devil you've ever met," Crowley said comfortably. "You have no idea of the scope of my plans."

"You'll be roasting on your own fires," she snarled at him, her eyes lighting up as her vessel drew on the souls of Heaven.

"We've been here before, haven't we?" Crowley's hand lifted, the gun aimed at her. "Let's see who blinks first," he said, pulling the trigger.

The bullet passed through the light and embedded itself in the wall as she disappeared. Damn, they were quick, he thought to himself. It'd been a fun couple of weeks, way back when. But probably something best not to think of revisiting.

"Hi, Cas," he said, walking around the chair and looking at him.

Castiel watched as Aion got to his feet, his sword held loosely in one hand. He looked at Crowley.

"That's right, Cas, I got me an angel on the payroll," Crowley confirmed cheerfully. "I wouldn't be too hard on him, matey; it's that kind of universe these days."

He lifted the gun, shifting the barrel a little as he fired. The bullet hit Castiel in the abdomen, light flooding out through the charred entry hole. Crowley turned to Aion.

"Now, grab him!" he ordered the angel. "And follow me."

* * *

_**Ignacio, Colorado**_

Dean swore as he pushed against the door, able to see his brother's shoulder through the four inches he could get open, realising that Sam was blocking it from opening further. He shoved hard and watched his brother's body flop over with the force of the push, squeezing in through the gap and shutting the door with his foot as he crouched beside him.

"Dammit, what did you do?" he muttered at Sam, snatching his hand away as he felt the burning hot skin on his face.

He was going to roast his brain cells at this rate, he knew, running to the bathroom, twisting the cold tap savagely and shoving the plug into the tub. He returned to the main room to grab Sam's arm and haul it over his shoulder, squashing down the shock that rose as he registered his brother's weight as he half-lifted, half-dragged him into the bathroom. He eased him down to the floor, not wanting to think about that loss or what it meant.

The water was filling the enormous cast-iron tub slowly and he dipped his hand in, shaking his head slightly at the temperature. He left Sam propped against the bathroom door and crossed the room, looking down the hall for the ubiquitous piece of machinery that sat in most hallways of every hotel and motel across the country. Two minutes later he came back and dumped the bucket into the bath, not looking at Sam as he turned and shot out of the room again, getting a second bucket and turning off the water when he'd dumped that in as well.

Crouching beside Sam, Dean caught up both of his brother's hands and levered his bigger frame over his shoulder. Again the weight loss caught him by surprise and he used the flash of reactive anger as he straightened, picking him up and carrying him to the edge of the bath, bending to release him into the ice-filled water. For a moment, his brother sank below the surface and his heart shuddered against his ribs, wondering if he'd taken too long, been too late. Then Sam catapulted out of the water, dragging in a deep breath, his skin white and goose-fleshed.

"Okay, take it easy," Dean said soothingly as Sam glared at him and climbed out of the cold water, anger and confusion at the situation warring over his face.

"You were on the floor and I could feel the heat from five feet away, Sam," Dean explained, passing him a towel. Sam wrapped it around his shoulders, his gaze fixed on his brother.

"He's here! I can feel him – I can hear him!"

"I know," Dean said, gesturing to the room.

"What?"

"I know he's here," Dean said again, leaning back against the sink. "The whole town, it's been laid out as a deflection sigil. An angel deflecting sigil."

"What?"

"Get dry, get dressed," Dean said, gesturing impatiently at the doorway. "You can hear him?"

"Somewhere here, and close, Dean," he said, turning and walking into the room, his teeth chattering softly. He stopped dead next to the bed and Dean swerved around him. "I don't know why, it feels like I'm connected to him … somehow."

"What?" Dean frowned. "Like a prophet kind of connection?"

"I don't think so. I can show you," Sam told him, dropping the towel on the end of the bed. "I saw the manager, delivering books to him."

"Books?"

"Books!" Sam repeated agitatedly, dragging off his clothes and dropping them on the floor as Dean tossed him dry ones from the bag. "Hardcovers, paperbacks, novels … books!"

"Stories," Dean said slowly as the connection came, the messenger's blessing for the … "Offerings."

"What?" Sam paused as he pulled the shirt over his head.

"The guy down at the museum said that the tribe gave stories as their offerings to the Great Spirit's messenger."

"And they're still doing it?"

"I guess so," Dean shrugged, tossing a pair of socks at him. "That's a lotta books, after all this time."

* * *

_**Amherst, Massachusetts**_

Kevin looked down at the take-out box in front of him. The ribs were good, almost as if they were real, he thought.

"I can't do it," he said, throwing his pen down. "It's the break in the stone – there's key writing and I can't make it out." He looked up at Sam. "You guys were right, I do need the other half of the tablet to get the trial. It's not too far from here."

"Awesome," Dean said. "What's the ten-twenty?"

"Springfield Storage, unit four-twenty-four, Springfield, Missouri," Kevin told him. "It's in the toolbox at the back of the unit."

"Right," Sam said, nodding. "We're on it."

"Okay, see you later," Kevin said, watching them walk out. It was a legitimate address. Dean'd told him about it months ago, when they'd been waiting for Sam to get back with Garth. Just one of those conversations that sometimes stick in the mind. Useful, though.

* * *

_**Ignacio, Colorado**_

"I'm not a hundred percent convinced that we shouldn't at least get a doctor to look at you, Sam," Dean said, pulling the door closed behind him.

"It wouldn't do any good, they wouldn't find anything," Sam said, using the wall next to him to keep upright and walking. "They'd do all the tests under the sun and they wouldn't find one goddamned thing. Except for the temperature."

"And the bleeding lungs," Dean added acerbically. "Don't want to forget those."

"I'm still remembering things, Dean." Sam ignored the comment, closing his eyes for a moment. "So clearly."

"Great."

"You used to read to me."

Dean looked at him. At least that didn't sound too bad.

"When I was little," his brother continued, weaving across into him and back to the wall. "I mean when I was really little. All kinds of stuff, Dean. You remember that?"

"No," he said, stepping to the side as Sam wandered into him again. "I mean, yeah, so what?"

"I remember the Little Train That Could … and Old Yeller, you remember Old Yeller? I had a dream, Dean," Sam slowed down. "Except that I think it was really a memory. In a dream."

Dean watched him, not liking the way Sam was rambling around different things, not wanting to know what the memory in the dream had been about.

"Dad was talking to Jim about me. About the blood." Sam said. "He knew, back when we were just little kids. Knew about Mom and the demon and what it had done. Knew he might not be able to save me."

"Sam, it was just a dream."

"No," Sam said, stopping and looking at him, his eyes clear and bright. "No, it was a memory. I heard them talking about it. I didn't remember that, until now. But I always knew that there was something wrong with me. I just didn't know that I knew."

"It wasn't your fault."

Sam shook his head vehemently. "I know that, Dean. That's not the point. The point is that it was there. All this time. And I – I wasn't innocent. I wasn't good. I was – I don't know – tainted. Fouled. Not clean."

Dean looked at him, seeing the revulsion in his brother's face, the loathing he felt for the thing that had lived inside of himself.

"Sam, that wasn't you –"

"Dammit, are you listening to me?" Sam pushed off against the wall, one arm swinging a little high as he turned. "It was me. It was lying right up against me, my whole life. It's still me." He stopped again, his head dropping. "Until now."

"What do you mean?"

"These trials, Dean," Sam said slowly, turning to look at him. "They're burning it out. I can feel that. Cell by cell, it's being dragged out of me, like the vampire cure did for you with the vamp's blood, and it's being burned up by what I've done, by each one I finish, I pass. I need the third trial, Dean. Then I'll be clean. Then I'll be just me, the way it was supposed to be."

Dean nodded slowly, and Sam looked at him in surprise. "You knew that?"

"No, I didn't know it," he said. "I thought maybe …"

"Is that why you haven't tried harder to get me to the hospital?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, I guess," Dean said. "I didn't want to force you into something that wasn't going to help. I just can't sit around and not do anything."

"I know."

"What were you going to show me?" Dean asked, looking down the hall. He wanted to get off the subject. It'd never been a good one.

Sam pointed down the hall. "The room near the elevator."

They walked along the corridor and stopped at the recessed doorway. Sam stared down at the empty floor. "But they were here, the books, the boxes – they've gone."

"Not far," Dean looked at the floor next to the door. The drag marks were clear enough. He stepped up to the door, pulling his picks out. The lock was very simple. Why bother with deadlocks when you lived down the rabbit hole, he thought to himself as he turned the knob silently and pushed the door open.

Inside the room were books. Hundreds of books, Sam thought.

Thousands of books, Dean realised, peering in the through the open doorway. Stacked against the walls, stacked in towers in the middle of the room, forming narrow, precarious pathways through them, piled on top of the furniture, on top of the wall cupboards, filling bookshelves long past the capacity to hold them, shelves sagging and bowing under the weight, stacked along the top so that the room could only be viewed in small slices.

Sam pressed a hand to his ear, the noise – the oscillation – getting louder, more intense in his head. He turned around, looking for the source

Dean walked slowly through the maze of the piles toward the end of the room and stopped as the rifle was cocked, the small sound loud in the silent room, his hand swinging wide to warn his brother.

The man holding the gun was small and round. Thick, grey, curly hair and a clipped beard framed a face that might've have looked convivial in other circumstances. A muted brown cardigan over shirt and pants gave the man the look of a retiree, early sixties, maybe, Dean thought.

"Who are you?" His voice was high.

"Metatron," Sam said, his face screwing up as the vibration in his skull became more pronounced.

"This is Metatron?" Dean asked, brows rising as he looked from the man to Sam and back. "_This_ is Metatron?"

"Sit down," the angel said from behind them, the long-barrelled rifle still aimed at Dean. Dean backed toward the armchair, Sam stumbling backwards to a straight-backed chair near it. He couldn't hear his footsteps or anything but the metallic shriek in his head.

"Who sent you?"

"We came on our own," Sam said loudly, feeling his fillings rattling inside his teeth. "We're the Winchesters."

Metatron looked at him narrowly, his gaze flicking back to Dean.

"I'm Dean," he said, gesturing to his brother. "This is Sam."

"Do you work for Michael?" the angel asked suspiciously. "Or Lucifer?"

Sam stared at him, eyes almost shut as he tried to simultaneously shut out the noise in his head and understand what the angel was saying. "What? How – how long have you been out of circulation?"

* * *

_**Amherst, Massachusetts**_

Cas looked around at the study, as Crowley walked around the desk and took the chair behind it. "Just wanted to take a moment away from the main chain, to chat, with my old business partner," he said, leaning back, the gun still held in one hand. "I assume you won't die, just yet. It takes a painful long time to bleed out from a gunshot."

"You can do whatever you want, Crowley," Castiel said. "I will never tell you where I buried the tablet."

Crowley looked at him, sighing. "I know, Cas," he said resignedly. "I know. Luckily, I don't believe you'll have to."

The angel looked up at him warily. Crowley was too relaxed, and far too affable. The demon had little control over his emotions, and seeing him like this was a reliable indicator that he thought he already knew everything he needed.

"I've been getting regular updates from my, expensive, friend here," he said conversationally, glancing at Aion. "Naomi should've caught you straight out of the gate, seeing as lately she's been knuckles-deep in that melon of yours," he continued, looking back at Castiel. "She thinks that when you touched the tablet, it broke her … construction … in your mind."

Cas kept his gaze on Crowley, his face expressionless. He could feel a trickle of unease, threading its way through him, overriding the pain. This then, he thought irrelevantly, was what Dean had told about him about instinct.

"The tablets weren't meant for the angels," he ground out at the demon. "And they weren't meant for you."

"She's got a lot on her plate, so you can't fault her for missing it," Crowley said, the affability disappearing as he spoke. "And I was thinking to myself, Self … if Cas got away from her by touching the tablet, why would he ever … stop touching the tablet?"

He leaned back against the desk. "And then I thought to myself – Self, he hasn't stopped touching the tablet, now, has he?"

Cas stared up at him as he smiled, then chuckled. The hand that flashed out hit the angel's torso under the ribs, fingertips driving in through his flesh in a single motion as the demon searched around the organs in the cavity for the stone. Blinding pain filled his vessel and his teeth snapped together, locked hard against it. Crowley drew the stone out with a delighted laugh, and the pain washed over and through him, an unending sea of it through the mesh of Jimmy's nervous system, rebounding and rippling and rebounding again.

Cas stared up at Aion, catching the seraphim's discomforted stare, locking onto it as he reached in vain for the healing power of the souls, the energy, anything. Aion's gaze cut away and Cas felt the emptiness at the end of the reach. He was not connected. He could not reach them.

"Oh, you're a pip, you are," Crowley said, looking from the bloodied tablet to him. "What am I going to do with you, Cas?"

The trill of his cell interrupted that pleasant train of thought and he transferred the tablet to the other hand as he reached for it.

"What?"

"The kid told us where the other half was but it wasn't," the demon who'd been monitoring Kevin Tran's translations said on the other end of the line, his voice loud over background music. "Sent us into some kind of hunter's mouse-trap."

Crowley stared at the phone disbelievingly. "You jack-asses! You're ruining my streak!"

He closed the call and put the phone back in his pocket, turning to Aion. "Watch him."

"I'll be right back," he promised Cas, and vanished.

* * *

_**Ignacio, Colorado**_

Dean relaxed a little as the barrel was lowered. "Michael and Lucifer, they're in the Cage."

"WE PUT THEM THERE OURSELVES," Sam said loudly, his fingers pressed tightly over his ears.

"And Gabriel?" Metatron asked, looking at Dean. "Raphael?"

"DEAD!" Sam said.

Dean flinched a little at Sam's volume, focussing on the angel. "You really don't know this?"

"I've been very careful," Metatron told him.

"HEY! CAN YOU TURN THAT DOWN?" Sam asked, the scraping, spinning noise pulsing against his ears – the insides of his ears, he thought.

"Turn what – oh, you're resonating?"

"Resonating? What do you mean, resonating?" Dean asked, looking at his brother.

"He's undertaken the trials?" Metatron asked, looking at Dean. "Which one?"

"HELL!" Sam said, almost shouting. Dean winced and nodded.

"Pretty far along too," Metatron said consideringly. "You get that far along and you start to resonate – with the Word."

He shrugged. "Or with its source, on the material plane. With me," he added, seeing the question in Dean's face.

"Can you feel the tablets?" Dean asked abruptly. "All of them?"

"Sometimes," Metatron said, lowering the end of the barrel to the floor. "Not always and not all of them."

"You said you were being careful," Dean said, filing away the answers. "Careful – why?"

"I'm not one of them," the angel said. "I'm not an archangel."

"You don't all play for the same team up there?" Dean asked curiously.

Metatron smiled dryly. "No, I'm afraid that doesn't seem to work much anywhere, that I've noticed." He set the rifle down and moved a pile of books from another straight-backed chair, pulling it out from behind the stack. "It did, when He was there, you understand. Then everyone did what they were supposed, more or less."

"Not Lucifer," Dean said dryly.

"No," Metatron agreed solemnly. "Not him. But that was the beginning of the end, you know. Adam's introduction and the rebellion and the war that followed. He saw it coming and he had me write down the instructions, for his Creations. For you."

"For us?"

"For all humanity. He knew what the timeframes were likely to be, you see. And He knew what would happen. And He wanted to see if He was right."

"Right about what?" Dean asked uneasily, feeling a sinking suspicion of what the angel was getting at.

"Oh, I think you know the answer to that," Metatron said, leaning back. "In any case, once He'd gone, I think everything went about along the lines He'd thought it would. And I realised, somewhat belatedly, I'll admit, that when the archangels worked out that what they had planned was going to require the Word, and its power, I got out, and I covered my tracks and buried myself and I left them to it."

"So you ran," Dean said, staring at him. "You have no idea of what's been going out there."

The angel smiled a little. "Oh, I know what's been happening, Dean. I know the paths that humanity – and everyone else – has chosen to take."

"You said –"

"I haven't watched it or listened to it," Metatron said, nodding. "But I know. He foresaw it, an aeon of chaos, of too many toys and no self-discipline, ages of cruelty and self-absorption and genocide and power struggles and for what? Wealth? That fleeting flash in the night?" He looked at them. "For power? For history and fame and glory? For love or hate? For revenge? There are no limits to the temptations that humanity will listen to, have listened to and have convinced themselves of."

"If you'd taken the time to look outside," Dean snapped at him. "You'd see that it's not just humanity that's been fiddling the odds and power plays!"

"No, of course not," Metatron agreed readily. "Hell whispered and Heaven joined in, both determined to have what they think is rightfully theirs – and humanity is caught between them. But that is the essence of free will. And choice. That you may choose what you will do – but the consequences, the victory, or the mess, belong to you as well. Are your responsibility."

He gestured around the room. "What humanity was given in its making was something that no other species, terrestrial, extra, ultra or universal has," he said. "The spark of the Divine, creativity."

Sam frowned, glancing at his brother. "And?"

"And?" the angel said in astonishment. "And when it is allowed to flourish, when it is nurtured and given time and room the results have been … well … heavenly – Mozart and Beethoven, Dickens and Shakespeare and Adams, Michaelangelo and Rembrandt and Baryshnikov and Sutherland and Streisand … poets and artists and ordinary families, creating islands of sanity in the chaos and raising their children to grow tall and strong and to think for themselves … this is what it is for, don't you understand that? To lift the mind, the heart, the soul to the highest pinnacle."

"That's not exactly what most people are doing," Sam said, feeling the resonance fade for a moment in his ears.

"No, it's not," Metatron said, nodding. "And creativity, when it is thwarted or ignored or punished, becomes destruction. As you have seen."

"You're talking about this as if you have no part in it," Sam said. "As if it has nothing to do with you!"

"It doesn't," Metatron said simply. "My directive was clear. When humanity had evolved enough, I was to give them the Word – all of the tablets – so that they could take control of their destiny. But, humanity has not evolved."

"That might've been a nice idea before the demons starting coming through gates that your kind opened for them!" Dean said furiously, staring at him. "It might've sounded like a reasonable fucking plan when the angels were doing their jobs! Don't talk to me about responsibility! I grew up on responsibility, on doing whatever you had to, to make sure that people were protected, were kept safe! And that those who have the ability to do the job – also have the responsibility to see that it is done!"

"I have my orders and like every other being with free will, I –"

"You don't want to sacrifice your nice, cushy life, safe and surrounded by make-believe, to go out there and do what you have the capability of doing," Dean cut him off. "Let me tell you a story … this is about a kid who was doing alright in an ordinary life. Straight A student. Mom who loved him ferociously. Then he got sucked in … to all this … angel … _crap_ and he became a prophet. Of the Word of God. _Your _prophet," he snapped, stabbing a finger at the angel for emphasis.

"Now you should have been looking out for him, but no, instead you're here, holed up, reading books – stories!"

"He's dead now," Sam said. "Because of you."

The angel dropped his gaze. "He's not dead."

Dean and Sam looked at each other. "Not?" Sam asked uncertainly.

"No, he's being held by the demon who has styled himself the King of Hell," Metatron said, turning away. "In Massachusetts, I think."

"Can you get him?" Dean frowned at the angel's manner. "He's your responsibility."

"I know." Metatron looked up at him. "You were right about that. He is my prophet."

He gestured to the stacks. "Cover your eyes, or turn away – don't look at the light."

Dean opened his mouth, the response near automatic and Sam elbowed him, pushing him further away from the open area and turning his back.

They saw their shadows leap onto the stacks and shelving in front of him, jet black, the colour bled out from everything else, and Dean heard the high-pitched whining, saw the glasses on the cupboard by the window oscillating delicately as the angel behind them called on the power he'd denied himself for millennia and reached out.

* * *

_**Amherst, Massachusetts**_

Castiel looked at the angel standing by the window. "How far can we let it go?"

"Shut up."

"How far can we let it all drop?" Cas persisted. "This charge, this duty, was left to us in trust – it is the sole purpose of our existence."

"Do you even know what the purpose was, Castiel?" Aion turned and walked to him, shaking his head. "They've been in all our heads."

"We aren't … machines … for anyone to program," Cas said slowly. "We were created to serve, created to obedience. Weapons, yes, but directed by those who worked for the purpose."

Aion stared at him for a moment. "That's all gone, Cas. Nothing matters."

"You are so wrong, my brother," the angel said, as Aion turned away again. He could feel it. Deep inside. It would take some effort to withdraw it. His fingertips found it, slipping off the casing. "It all matters."

He closed his eyes and drew out the flattened slug. In a non-vital area of the vessel's body it would only wound. But in a vital area, it would kill.

"Who's running things now?" Cas asked.

"I don't know," Aion admitted. "Everything there is compartmentalised, Castiel. Everything is divided and everyone is suspicious of everyone else."

"That sounds like an excuse."

The angel laughed humourlessly. "Does it? Do you think Samandriel thought it was an excuse when you killed him, Castiel? Do you think that without the Word in your hand you wouldn't have kept beating that human until there was nothing left but a bloodied pulp on the floor?"

Cas rose silently from the chair, crossing the room in two strides. "Aion."

The angel turned and Castiel thrust the slug into his eye, pushing it past the semi-fluid eyeball and into the brain behind. Light flooded out of the vessel, brilliant and clean and filling the air with its singular frequency and then gone.

"We have all betrayed, and we have all been betrayed, my brother," Cas said, releasing his grip on the dead vessel's jacket and allowing the body to slump to the floor. "But it does not mean that we give up our purpose, or the right that stands behind it."

_This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it._

He remembered that, he thought as he staggered back, away from the window. He remembered the voice of his friend, the man who had once been his friend. And he remembered how it had felt to follow him into a battle that they couldn't possibly win, but somehow … had.

* * *

Kevin looked up as the metal pressure door fell inwards to the floor, Crowley stepping over it and striding down toward him. Well, he thought, here it was. _Showtime_.

"You little prat," Crowley said, looking at the prophet who licked his fingers as he put down the last cleaned-off rib. "Having fun yet?"

He dropped the angel tablet on top of a book and walked to the table.

Kevin smiled at him. "Screw you."

"Am I seeing this?" Crowley said. "How'd you figure it out?"

"Dean suggested the secret knock," Kevin said. "He woudn't've forgotten it."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "Fucking Hardy Boys."

"It was the way they acted, Crowley," Kevin said, the side of his mouth lifting a little. "I don't think, on their best day, Sam and Dean would go into town and get me a barbecued dinner." He looked at the demon. "Not when there are leftover burritos in the fridge."

Crowley closed his eyes. "So, my … demons … were too polite?"

Kevin thought about it, nodding after considering them. "Yeah."

"That's just fucking great, innit?"

"You know they're up to the third trial?" Kevin leaned back and looked at him. "They're going to shut the door on Hell. Sorry, all the doors."

"I'm not worried, kid," Crowley said. It wasn't quite the truth. He was extremely worried. But he wasn't about to lose the sale that easily.

Kevin picked up the half of the tablet that Crowley had given him, getting to his feet as he held it up. "You have no idea what's on this Demon tablet," he said quietly. "The power that you could've gotten – with this – if you weren't running around like a chicken with its head cut off –"

Crowley stared at him. "You think I can't make you tell?"

"I know you can't," Kevin said gently. "And you do too."

Where had this boy gained this confidence, Crowley wondered nervously. At what point had everything changed from his way or the highway? And why was he allowing it to happen?

"You know what? he said, swallowing the thoughts and the unease and the terror-tinged anger far down. "I've already won. I have the Angel tablet, you little shit!"

It boiled up again at the sight of Kevin's mouth, twitching in a barely repressed smile.

"And I've got deals and plans up the jacksy," he told the prophet. His hand flashed out, seizing Kevin's throat and tightening as he pushed the boy back and slammed him into the wall.

"And I don't –" He lifted the boy higher, feeling the cartilage giving beneath his palm, the bones grinding against each other beneath his fingers. "– need – you!"

Kevin watched the darkness close around his vision, his air gone, lungs aching, his windpipe being crushed as the vertebrae was pulverised. It didn't matter. He hadn't broken, hadn't given up. He could die at least with that knowledge.

His eyes snapped open as the pain vanished and the darkness was replaced with light, brilliant, pure, burning.

Crowley stared as the prophet's eyes filled with the light, his entire body lifting with the power of it, and the frequency making the glass in the cabin quiver in sympathy. The pain and the violent concussion came together, sending him flying backwards across the cabin, hands and face burning and crackling as Kevin vanished. _It wasn't possible_, the thought screamed through his mind. No one was guarding the prophet, not any more. He lay on his back, writhing with the agony coruscating through his body.

_NOT FUCKING POSSIBLE!_

* * *

_**Ignacio, Colorado**_

The light died and Dean turned around, seeing Kevin slumped in the armchair, eyes closed. He was too far to see if the kid was breathing or not, but he couldn't see a discernible rise or fall in the narrow chest.

Metatron stepped close to the chair, looking down. It had been a long time since he'd done this, he thought, demanded the power, received it through himself. A long, long time. And they would find him. Unless he was quick.

He laid his hand over Kevin's chest, calling and reaching and feeling it flow through him. The souls in Heaven were the ultimate force of creativity, pure and untainted, powerful and capable of anything. It flowed through his hand, through the fabric of the boy's clothing, through the skin of his body and inside, lighting him gently and repairing and replacing everything that had been damaged, had been hurt or torn or broken.

Metatron stepped back, watching the chest rise and fall steadily, watching the pulse beat strongly in the hollow at the base of his throat, watching the soul recharge the body.

"Is that it?" Dean asked, his gaze flicking between Kevin and the angel.

"Give him a minute."

He turned, walking away through the narrow aisles between the books. Dean looked at Kevin for a moment longer, then followed him. Metatron stood by the sink, checking the cleanliness of a glass in the early morning light that flooded through the window.

"How'd you get past Crowley's angel warding?"

The angel turned to him, one brow lifted. "I'm the Scribe of God," he chided. "I erased it."

"But you saw?" Dean pressed. "I mean, you caught up on everything that's been going on? All the crap that your brethren have been doing to humanity, all this time?"

Metatron glanced past him. "I saved the boy, didn't I?"

"But are you in?" Dean looked at him. With the angel – the scribe or whatever he was – on their side, they might have a snowball's. He didn't want another neutral party. "With us, I mean?"

The angel looked thoughtfully at him. "You really intend on closing the gates of Hell?"

Dean saw something in the angel's eyes, beyond the careful weighing up he could sense. The scribe knew more about the trials, about what would be asked of them than he was saying. He knew that he wouldn't say it. Not now. Perhaps not ever. Free will, he thought acerbically. You pays your money and you takes your chances. And he would. He would do it because Hell and Heaven had too much power.

"Seems like the thing to do, don't it?"

For a moment, he thought that angel would simply say yes. He should've known better, he thought later.

"It's your choice," Metatron said slowly. "That's what this has all been about – it's what is has always been about. The choices you make."

Dean felt the prickle on the back of his neck at the emphasis the angel put on the words.

"You are going to have to weigh this choice, Dean," Metatron said carefully. "Ask yourself … what is it going to take to do this? And, what will the world be like, after it's done."

"Now, why does that sound like a trick question?" Dean asked him.

"It's not," Metatron said, filling the glass with water. "But it's not a simple question. Because this is not a simple task. And it will require more of you than you can imagine."

"Dean?" Sam called from behind the shelves and piles of books. "Dean!"

He turned reluctantly away from the angel and walked back to his brother, his gaze on the armchair where Kevin opened his eyes. He leaned on the arm, his hand curling around the boy's shoulder as Kevin looked up at him.

"Kevin? Hey," he said quietly, relief filling him. "Thought we lost you, kiddo."

Kevin shifted slightly, arching his back as he dragged out a broken slab of stone from the waistband of his jeans. He held it up, his gaze shifting between the stone and the man who was watching him.

"Second half of the tablet," he said, handing it to Dean. "And I got it."

Taking it, Dean looked down at the stone, his thoughts churning uncomfortably. Twenty minutes ago, he'd have been looking for the fucking champagne, he thought darkly. Now, he wasn't so sure.

Kevin looked up at him. "Third trial. I didn't tell Crowley."

Sam looked at him. "What is it?"

"To cure a demon," Metatron said from behind them, his voice weary.

All three turned to look at him. Kevin felt his relief, his joy, dissolving as he realised that everything he'd been through had been – perhaps not a waste – but certainly made redundant by the man standing behind the Winchesters.

"Yeah," he said. "Who are you?"

"I am the angel who is sworn to protect you, Kevin Tran, Prophet of the Word of God," he said quietly.

"I thought the archangels were all dead?" Kevin looked up at Dean questioningly. He'd been kidnapped and tortured by the King of Hell, healed by another angel, who'd since disappeared, dragged around, messed about with generally and he realised he wasn't really able to trust anyone but the two men standing near him now.

"He's not an archangel," Sam told him.

"He's the Messenger of God," Dean added, glancing around at Metatron. And one fucking cryptic customer, he thought to himself.

* * *

"You light up their screens with what you did?" Dean asked Metatron as he closed the door of the bedroom quietly.

"I don't think so," Metatron said. "But it's possible."

Dean glanced back at the door. "I left him out on his own once," he said, turning back to the angel. "I'm not doing it again, not without a guarantee of safety."

Metatron nodded. "There are no guarantees in life, Dean, but yes, I understand what you are asking." He looked away for a moment. "I will protect him, as you would, to the death."

That was about as good as he was going to get, Dean realised. He buried his misgivings about handing over that responsibility to someone else and nodded.

"Alright," he said, turning away. He turned back. "If you think there's even a chance that someone might've figured it out –"

"Yes," Metatron said hurriedly. "Even a chance."

Dean turned away again, and Metatron cleared his throat. "Dean, you and your brother –"

He turned back, more reluctantly this time. "Yeah?"

"You understand what is happening to him?"

"We think so," Dean hedged, not entirely sure about any of it. "Why was it him? Why not me?"

"I can't say for certain," Metatron said, looking through the books at the man sitting in the chair, head tipped back, eyes closed. "But I suspect he needed it more than you did."

Dean frowned. "That's bullshit. If God is so gung-ho on picking someone –"

"It's not just the matter of the one who can do the job," the angel said. "There is also the matter of redemption and forgiveness."

"He didn't choose to be a part of the games Heaven and Hell wanted to play," Dean said, the warning implicit in his voice.

"No more than you, or your father, or even, your mother," Metatron agreed. "Nevertheless, once the board was set, the choices – all of them – were your own."

Dean ducked his head. He'd told Sam the same thing.

"Free will means that no matter who tries to control us, we can – we are able – to choose a different path, to choose as wisely as we are capable of. There are choices you have made that even now, knowing the path they put you on, you would still make again, in the same way. You know that."

The angel sighed. "You are responsible for your choices. Your brother for his, but do not make the mistake of thinking that you have made your choices for the same reasons, or from the viewpoint. Each of us needs the road that is uniquely suited to ourselves. And that applies to angels and demons and monsters, as much as humanity."

Dean looked up, the question already in his eyes and the soft flutter of wings filled his ears as the angel vanished.

* * *

_**I-70 E**_

Sam sat in the car, feeling the electric energy buzzing off his brother. Despite everything, they were back in the game, and Dean was leaning toward hope again.

He wasn't sure of that, for himself. He thought that the trials and the strengthening – _what? power of God? purification?_ – was burning the blood from him. It left him with a feeling of … vulnerability suddenly. A feeling that he would be missing a part of him that he'd always felt, always known. _Stockholm Syndrome_, he told himself acidly. He didn't want that poison in him. Didn't want the black rage or the knowledge that if so much as one drop of demon blood ever passed his lips again, it would be all over. He wanted to be clean. He wanted to be free.

But the feeling persisted. And he knew why. Once he was free. Clean. Normal, he thought, derisively, it would be all on him. There would be not a single excuse to blame for his decisions, for his choices, for his actions. No good intentions as the demon-driven superman of the west. No possible reasons for failure. It would all be on him. Just Sam.

The thought was … daunting. He wasn't sure if he was strong enough to handle that. Wasn't sure if he was capable of bearing the burdens they did without the ready-made fallback. _It's not your fault, Sam. You didn't have a choice, Sam. It wasn't you, Sam_.

The memories were still coming, some little more than a moment, some detailed and painful. All of them revolving around the man who sat next to him, driving them through the night. Their father had bled and died to protect them, but it was his brother that filled his memories … teaching him, comforting him, teasing him, beating him, letting him win, laughing with him … crying with him. Dean filled the years as John Winchester couldn't. He hadn't been there, really been there, present in mind, body and soul, enough. But Dean, he'd been there through it all.

He knew that when he'd run from things, it'd been the spectre of his brother's disappointment in him that had been chasing him. Knew that when he looked back on the choices he'd made, it was his brother's face, filled with an aching despair at those decisions, that he saw. Knew that when he'd decided to do the trials, at that crossroads moment when there'd still been time to find another hellhound, he had chosen with the need to prove to his brother that he was worthy, that he could be trusted, that he still deserved the love that had kept him safe his whole life. It'd been hopelessly naïve, he knew. Hopelessly hopeful. But it still drove him on.

* * *

Watching the road, his blood fizzing slightly in his veins, Dean felt the melancholy from beside him as readily as he felt the fluctuating temperature differences in his brother. He couldn't stop to ask about the thoughts Sam was entertaining, the promise of him recovering, really recovering, was still too new to put down.

"Cure a demon," he said suddenly, knuckles whitening as his hands gripped the wheel, needing to say it out loud, needing to hear it out loud. "Ignoring the fact that I don't actually know what that means, if we do this – if we do this, you get better, right? I mean, you stop trying to cough up a lung and-and bumping into furniture?"

Sam looked at him. "I feel better, yeah, just having a direction to move in."

"Well, good 'cause where we headed doesn't sound like a picnic," Dean said, his tone much more subdued.

That was true, Sam thought. "Well, we're heading somewhere," he said slowly. "The end."

A nervous laugh tickled the back of Dean's throat and he swallowed against it, knowing it was a reaction, an old habit, to laugh off those moments when the truth suddenly shot out into the light and the only choice you had was to laugh or to live with it.

He looked back at the road and swore inwardly as his foot hit the brake. The lump in the middle of the road was human-sized and human-shaped and he was doing eighty. The brakes locked, sending the car across to the other side of the highway, clouds of smoke pouring from the rubber as he yanked the wheel around and stopped a few feet from the man lying there in his headlights.

Throwing open the door, he faltered as he recognised the face that lifted to look at him, blood covering nose and mouth. "Cas?!"

The angel pressed his hand tightly over the wounds in his stomach, staring at Dean.

"A little help here," Castiel said tiredly.


	44. Chapter 44 By Hell's Command

**Chapter 44 By Hell's Command**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

The library was still and peaceful, stacks of files littering the table, interleaved with open books, the printouts from Kevin's files, notepads filled with the occasional thoughts he'd had on the possibilities that might include the curing of a demon.

Sam looked around as he heard footsteps in the hall, recognising the heavy boots. Dean hadn't said a word since they'd manhandled Cas into the Impala's back seat and driven back here. He'd helped get the angel upstairs and into a bedroom, and had turned around and left. Sam had spent an hour cutting the angel's shirt away from the wound, drawing the edges together as much as possible and smearing the healing paste from the apothecary over both the holes in Castiel's abdomen as thickly as possible, covering them with a thin layer of gauze and binding it until he was reasonably sure that no movement would dislodge the dressing.

His brother walked into the library, holding an armful of the order's files, the lowest ones yellowing and cracked along the edges.

"Please tell me that's everything," he said tiredly, sneaking a glance at his watch. Seven. In the morning, presumably.

"Yeah," Dean snorted. "No, not even close. Two more rooms, Sam. These guys kept files on every demonic possession in this country for the last three hundred years, so far as I can tell. We got Borden, Lizzie … all the way back to … Crane, Ichabod."

He smiled and handed over the stack, his expression flattening out as Sam dropped the pile on the table and sucked in a deep breath, eyes screwing shut as the burning flared along his veins, feeling as if it were lapping at his brain.

"How are you feeling?"

"Honestly?" Sam opened his eyes slowly, letting out the breath he'd been holding, drawing in another long one as he reached for the top file. "My whole body hurts. Someone could've transferred my blood and exchanged it for hydrochloric acid for all I can tell. My eyeballs don't feel like they're right size anymore. It hurts to take a deep breath. I feel nauseous and like I'm starving – both at the same time. And … everything smells like rotting meat."

"Maybe you should take a break, get some air?" Dean winced inwardly at the inadequacy of the remark. He couldn't think of anything else to suggest.

"Man, the only thing that's going to make me feel better is finishing this," Sam said, looking up at his brother. "You heard anything from Kevin?"

"No, but Metatron said that hotel is something like here – signal gets scrambled coming and going," Dean said, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "I can't find anyone who's seen or heard from Garth, or Mrs Tran either."

From the line of printers in the war room, there was a whirring sound then the sudden chatter of printing. Sam looked around, frowning slightly as he got up and walked down the steps, going to the bins and pulling out the pages that had printed. They were newspapers reports, one from the Denver Post, story filed for today's edition, the second from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, story filed two days ago. He skimmed over them, brow creasing up as he took in the details.

"What?" Dean looked down at him.

"Uh … not sure," Sam said slowly. "One of the bots has been searching on weird deaths, nationwide. In Milwaukee, an Andrea Barr and her teenage son were found in their home, cause of death drowning – and a Tommy Collins was murdered – somehow – in a cabin outside of Denver."

"Lucas …" Dean turned around and walked down the steps. "Lucas and … Andrea – wasn't that the kid and his mom, the ones that were being targeted by the vengeful spirit at … some lake up north?"

"I know the other name too," Sam said, staring at the pages. "The wendigo attack – his sister went in after him?"

"How'd he die?" Dean asked, pushing aside the stab of his memories of them. Andrea and Lucas had both almost drowned – Lucas in the lake and Andrea in her bathtub. There weren't any coincidences in their life.

"His girlfriend said that he started to bleed from the ears, nose and eyes … and then his head exploded." Sam stared at his brother. "No one else was there at the time."

"Crap," Dean said, rubbing a hand over his face. "You think they somehow got involved with something else?"

"Or something was attracted to them, maybe because of what happened to them before?"

"We don't have time for this right now."

Sam looked down at the reports. They didn't. They were on the clock to find the way to complete the third trial. His life was depending on that. "I'll keep an open file on this, maybe if Cas can find Garth –?"

"Be the only useful thing he's done in months," Dean said sourly, turning away and walking back up to the library.

"Dean, you know he was –"

"So, with the whole nausea thing, you think you can keep something down?" he cut Sam off abruptly.

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding as he walked back to the table, putting the printouts down. "Sure."

Dean headed for the hall, veering pointedly to one side as Cas walked through the doorway.

"Morning." He watched Dean walk out of the room, listened to him go down the hall.

"Cas, how're your holes?" Sam looked at the pristine, new white shirt the angel was wearing. "Where'd you get the shirt?"

"Reconstituted it from the old one," Castiel said absently, looking around. "And they're closing up. Slowly."

He sat down at the end of the table, looking at Sam carefully. "And you're getting worse."

"Well, two trials down, one to go," Sam said, looking down at the file in front of him.

"And the final trial – do you know what it is?"

"I have to cure a demon," Sam said disparagingly.

"Cure –? You mean undo the distortion and torment of the soul?" Castiel leaned forward, looking at him sharply.

"Is that possible?" Sam asked, brows lifting. "Turn a demon back into a human soul?"

"Theoretically," Cas said. "Any soul will be granted the kingdom of God if it repents freely and sincerely. And almost every demon is, at its core, a human soul."

Dean walked back down the hall, holding a plate and a bottle of beer. He ignored the angel, putting the plate in front of his brother and taking a fast swig of the beer.

"Still good," he said, putting the beer on the table next to the plate.

Sam looked at the plate. "A half-drunk beer, jerky and three peanut butter cups?"

"Haven't, uh, had time to –" Dean looked down at the plate. "We're running real low."

Sam lifted a brow quizzically. "And this'll get my strength back?"

"Yeah, I'll make a run," Dean said, turning away.

Castiel got to his feet slowly. "Dean, I can go with you."

Sam watched his brother walk past the angel without speaking, picking up his jacket from the chair and pulling it on, his back to the table.

"Dean – I'm sorry," Cas tried again.

Turning, Dean looked at him. "For what?"

"For everything."

"Everything?" Dean said consideringly. "That's … that's a lot of stuff. You got a for-instance? Like, uh … ignoring us?"

"Yes." Cas dropped his gaze.

Sam watched as his brother's expression hardened.

"Like lying to us? Again."

"Yes."

"Like bolting off with the angel tablet … and then losing it?" he asked, anger and pain and frustration circling in a rising spiral as he continued. "'Cause you didn't trust me? You didn't trust _me_."

"Yes," Cas said unwillingly.

"Yeah." He looked coldly at the angel. "Nah, that's not going to cut it. Not this time."

"Dean, I thought I was doing the right thing."

"Yeah, you always do."

The angel's face twitched and Sam thought that had hit deep. It was true, and only the truth hurt that much. He cleared his throat, looking at Dean.

"You remember seeing a Room 7B on the archive levels?"

Dean turned to look at him. "Fourth level."

"We should check it out before you go," Sam said, getting to his feet and glancing apologetically at Cas as he followed his brother out of the library and down the hall to the stairs.

* * *

The room was on the fourth level, one of a row of separate rooms built into the floor space and holding the order's files, some of which dated back to the Dark Ages.

"Dean, go easy on Cas, okay?" Sam said as Dean flicked on the light. "He's one of the good guys."

"Sam, if anybody else – and I mean _anybody_ – pulled that kind of crap, I'd've stabbed them in neck, on principle!" Dean bit out. "Why should I give him a free pass?"

"Because you've done it for me," Sam said, looking at him. "And I've done a lot worse."

Dean stared irritably at him. "You're my brother."

"He's your friend."

"What are we supposed to be looking down here?" Dean turned sharply away, gaze scanning over the shelving that filled the room.

_And that would be the end of that conversation_, Sam thought with a sigh. "Um, anything on Case 1138," he said, turning to look in the other direction. "It was a Class Five Infernal Event, Wentzville, Missouri, March 8th 1957."

"Class Five Infernal Event?" Dean said derisively. "That any relation to a Class Five free-roaming vapour?"

"What?" Sam stopped and looked at him.

"Ghostbusters. Nothing," Dean said, shrugging. "Whatever. So what makes this puppy chow so special?"

"It was weird," Sam said, crouching to look at the lower shelves.

"Weird how?"

"No clue." Sam shuffled along. "The file on Beverly Towland's possession just had a note in the margin about Room 7B and the word 'weird' … with three exclamation points."

"Three?" Dean said dryly. "Helpful."

"Yeah."

Dean looked along the lowest shelf, his gaze dropping to the floor as he saw the painted arc beneath the shelving. "Hmmm."

"Got it," Sam said, opening a box from the opposite side. It held a large envelope.

"Sammy, check this out," Dean said, pushing against the shelf. It moved easily, despite the weight on it, and he realised the shelf had been balanced and fitted with hidden wheels for the purpose of moving it out of the way.

He pulled it out and felt the shelf stop, the centre giving way as he tugged a little harder, the two halves of the shelves opening out toward him like doors.

Behind the shelves, another room was in darkness. Pulling out his flashlight, Dean swung the beam around, brows rising as he saw the shackles, embedded in the concrete floor, and in the walls, the dull gleam of the smooth grey metal broken up by the engravings on each. He glanced to the side of the room and the flashlight picked out a lightswitch. Walking into the room, he flipped it on and four bright overhead lights came on.

Bare brick walls. Bare concrete floor. And the manacles. Enough to hold several people, he thought, walking closer to a set hanging from the ceiling. Several _possessed_ people, he reconsidered, as he looked at the engravings.

Uneasiness filled him as he recognised the sigils. "Sam, these are binding sigils."

His brother stepped close, looking at the symbols on the shackles. "To bind a demon?"

"Not just the meatsuit," Dean said slowly, memory trickling back. "These are binding hoodoo for souls. I saw –" He cut himself off abruptly, eyes squeezing shut as he forced the memory back. "They can trap the soul, whether it's in a meatsuit or not."

Sam glanced at him, hearing the bright edge in his voice. "What were they doing here?"

"Interrogating demons," Dean said, turning away from Sam and looking around the room again. "I guess."

"Thorough."

"Yeah." Dean felt a shiver pass through him, ice up his spine. Somewhere around here there would be a cupboard filled with tools. Specialised tools. Specialised equipment. His stomach rose and fell a little at the thought.

"What do you got there?" he asked, turning back to his brother and looking at the plain brown envelope Sam held. He couldn't get close to it right now. But sometime he was going to have to go through all of this, and figure out what the hell they'd been doing in here.

Sam opened the envelope and reached in, pulling out a film spindle. He looked at the label at the centre which was unhelpfully blank. "Uh … movie night?"

* * *

_**Wichita, Kansas**_

Frank Bellings looked down at the building site as his foreman unlocked the high chain-link gates with relief. Six months they'd been stuck, injunctions on the damned site from the local county on safety issues, his machinery and materials stuck here, rusting slowly. This morning the last of them had been cleared up and they could get back to work.

He walked down to the foundations, his gaze flicking between the roughed out plan in his notebook and the laid concrete and steel piers, checking off where they'd left everything before they'd been shut down. Goddamned county officials needing a bribe for every goddamned decision they'd made, he thought angrily. Beside him, Harry walked silently, looking over the equipment carefully, aware that Frank was ready to blow a gasket between the delays and the inordinate amounts of money that had already been poured into the development, unwilling to be the one to set that off.

"What the –" Frank stopped at the lip of the deep concrete pit, staring down. "We finished with section twenty two, didn't we?"

Harry glanced at the sketch in the book, and down to the floor of the pit. The concrete slabs had been laid in a grid pattern, each numbered to save on time with installation of essential services. Section twenty two was about half of the open cavity finished, at least on the sketch. In the hole in front of them, another strip had been laid. Twenty three, he thought worriedly, the churned up muddy ground next to it showing the depth of the slab.

"Yeah, twenty two," he confirmed. "No one laid that when we locked up the gates."

"Well, someone has!" Frank bellowed, striding down into the hole. He crouched down beside the thick slab. "No reinforcement in this. And the pipes weren't laid first." He turned to look at Harry. "What the fuck!?"

"I'll get the hoe," Harry said quickly, turning around and heading for the standing machines.

"No!" Frank shouted, stopping him in his tracks. "No, wait a sec –"

He looked down at the smooth slab, its joins matching the others precisely. He'd grown up in Chicago, moved to the mid-west after his father had gotten out of the construction business in the Windy City. Gotten out for one reason.

More delays, he thought, shoulders slumping. Was there no one who would give an honest working stiff a break? "Call the cops, Harry."

"You think someone's buried under that?" Harry's eyes widened dramatically.

Frank shrugged resignedly. "Whoever poured it knew what they doing," he explained. "Yeah, I don't think they were helping us out."

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam threaded the leader through and onto the empty reel, adjusting the tension carefully and flicking the switch. The projector stuttered to itself loudly, and the film began to play on the smooth white wall.

Another four reports had chattered off the printer lines while they were exploring the fourth level. Salvation, Iowa. Greenwood, Mississippi. Bloomington, Illinois and Joliet, Illinois. The names had leapt out at him this time. Monica and Rose Holt. Evan Hudson. Susan Thompson and her daughter, Tyler. Carolyn Smyth. He was beginning to dread the sound of the printers in the other room.

"Simon? We're filming," the woman's voice was high, an underlying thread of excitement filling it as the camera approached a priest, sitting on a set of steps, cigarette smoke curling lazily upwards.

"Oh … uh, hello world," the young priest said uncertainly, staring into the lens.

"So this new ritual you're going to do; it's a type of exorcism? How does it work?" the woman's voice asked offscreen.

The priest looked down at the floor. Even through the medium of black and white film, Dean could see the nervousness in him, the tremble in his hands given away by the smoke's jittery spiral. Not really one of God's frontline soldiers, he thought.

"Simon, it's time." A man's voice, older and also offscreen.

Simon smiled awkwardly at the camera as he stubbed out the cigarette. "I don't know. This is my – first time."

He got up and walked around the staircase, and the camera followed him, the footage catching the reflection of the woman holding the camera in a mirror as they walked past.

"Wait a minute – was that Abaddon?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded. "Henry said she was a hunter," he said, dragging back the memories of his grandfather's explanations of what had happened in '58. "Sands. Abaddon possessed her to get to the order."

Behind the stairs, the space opened out and the camera jerked as the woman walked out behind the priest. Dozens of candles burned brightly, flaring slightly on the film. In the centre of the room, an elderly woman had been chained to the floor, the flowered cotton housedress torn and flapping around her thin body as she stared up at the priest standing by a table, her voice raw and harsh, her eyes black, from corner to corner.

"Hurry, we must do it now," the older priest said to the younger as the camera focussed on him.

Dean's eyes narrowed as he looked at the scene, taking in the details. The normal exorcism essentials covered the table, flasks and the Book of Prayer and the priest's sacramental sashes. A long, thick-bladed knife lay in the midst of them, the edge catching a gleam from the candlelight as the camera panned over it.

Simon picked up a bottle of water, uncorking it and throwing the contents over the elderly woman. Steam rose as her flesh blackened where the water hit, her shrieks rising as she thrashed against the shackles that held her. The camera zoomed in a little, focussing on her face and the wrist and neck collars, then panned to see the two priests approach the demon, Father Simon trembling from head to foot as he held out his rosary, the older priest beside him incanting in Latin.

"_Ego præcipio tibi ut dimittam vos, et cogere ténuit innocentis. Abluti estis in animo mundabo sanguinem Agni, et facta est super magnitudine mali dolori tibi!_"

Father Simon's lighter voice wavered against the older priest's certain delivery. The priest drew the knife over his palm, his blood spilling out along the cut and strode forward to the demon-possessed woman, slapping his hand over her mouth.

Castiel leaned forward as light spilled from the woman's eyes and nose, leaking out from around the priest's hand as she arched back against the chains. The explosion of light burst from the woman and both priests were knocked backward, the camera swinging down to the floor as the hunter leapt back.

"Where's the demon?" Sands said, lifting the camera and focussing on the old woman's body, lying on the floor. There was a hole in her chest, the rib cage bent outwards, the lungs and heart cooked and ribbons of steam rising from the cavity.

"Stop filming," the older priest told her, waving his hand.

"What happened?" Sands pressed him as he got to his feet.

"Just stop –"

The footage went to white and the film strip flapped as the reel emptied.

"Well, that was weird," Dean said thoughtfully. "With three exclamation points."

"That wasn't a normal exorcism," Sam said, looking at his brother. "They changed the words."

Dean glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah, kind of the least of it, don't you think?"

"I believe that _abluti estis_ is Latin for wash – cleanse," Castiel said, looking at Sam.

"Ever seen an exorcist use his own blood? Or a demon who can't get out any other way take a short cut through the ribs?" Dean ignored the angel, looking at his brother.

Sam shook his head, looking through the file beside him. "We got a current address for Father Simon," he said. "The older priest died in 1958 but Simon is still living in Wentzville, Missouri."

"You think it's worth a drive?"

"Dean, everything in these files – possessions, demons, we've seen it before." He turned to look at the projector, stabbing a finger at it for emphasis. "But that, that was all new. Yeah, I think it's worth a drive!"

"Alright, let's roll," Dean said, getting up and hooking his jacket from the back of the chair. "Not you," he added to the angel without looking at him.

"Sam is more damaged than I am," Cas pointed out.

"Yep, well, you know, even banged-up, Sammy comes through," Dean said tersely.

Sam looked at him in surprise. That wasn't strictly speaking the truth, especially over the last year, he thought uncertainly.

"Dean, I just want to help –"

"We don't need your help!" Dean snapped at him. "Just stay here, and …" He looked away, gesturing dismissively. "… get better."

Cas looked at Sam as Dean turned and headed for the stairs. Sam shook his head slightly.

"He'll get over it, Cas," he said in a low voice to the angel. "Just takes time."

Grabbing his jacket, he hurried after his brother. He wasn't a hundred percent that what he'd just told the angel was true.

* * *

_**I-70 E, Kansas**_

"How long?" Sam asked, shuffling the files on his lap.

"Six hours, give or take," Dean said, his gaze fixed on the road. "Get some sleep."

Sam looked at him in frustration. He couldn't sleep. Could barely sleep in a bed, with nothing but the burning in his veins to keep him awake.

"You know, Cas has been pretty much broken and put back together –" he said tentatively.

Dean exhaled heavily. "Sam, I know what happened. I was there, a lot of the time."

"I'm just saying –"

"Yeah, well, don't," Dean cut him off. "You think that trusting a broken angel is any better than trusting a lying one?"

"He didn't mean to –"

"What? Didn't mean to keep us in the dark over what was going on upstairs? Didn't mean to lie to us about the angel tablet and what he was doing to get it?" Dean shook his head. "He did mean to do those things, Sam."

"Dean, no matter how much he's hurt y –"

"I'm not – this is preventative, okay?" Dean said, his voice rising slightly. "This is making sure that the only people we trust are the ones that've proved themselves."

Sam blinked at that statement. Did that mean that his brother was prepared to trust him again? Dean's shifting allegiances didn't necessary reflect that, he realised slowly. It was entirely possible that his brother was just running out of people he could put his back against.

"Everyone makes mistakes, Dean," he said softly. "Even angels."

He saw Dean's hands tighten around the wheel. "He had a chance, Sam. And he blew it. And he's not getting another one. End of story," he added, flicking a sideways look at his brother. "End of conversation."

"Cas asked if curing the demon meant returning it to a human soul," Sam said after a moment.

"Is that possible?"

"I don't know," Sam said, looking down at the pile on his lap. "He didn't know either."

"Is that what that priest was trying to do?"

"It wasn't an exorcism."

"No, but it sure as hell didn't do anything for the demon – or the old lady," Dean muttered.

They passed into Missouri at midday, the traffic flowing steadily and moving through it easy for a change.

He wasn't looking at events that had surrounded finding the angel tablet and losing it. He was trying not to look at them, letting his anger keep them away, keep them buried under its righteous heat.

He'd never given Cas any reason to doubt him. Any reason to believe that he wasn't rock-solid behind him. _Well_, the small voice in his mind considered slowly, _except for trying to take him before he opened Purgatory. And … uh … summoning Death to destroy him_.

That was different, he argued hotly. That was Cas out of control and not himself. And the angel had rejected his offer of help, the first time. Hadn't trusted him then either.

Done was done, he thought. And he wasn't signing up for round three. They didn't need Cas' help. Didn't need the doubt and risk of it. Didn't need to get hammered again for wanting … he pushed that thought aside, jaw setting as he shifted lanes to get out from alongside the driver of the silver Buick who was persisting in sitting in his blind spot.

He had one person left. Just one. Sam had broken just about every single foundation of the relationship they'd had in the last five years. All the things he'd counted on, had trusted and relied on. But he always came back. Eventually. And there was no one else. He didn't think there ever would be. He'd seen the offers – from Garth, from Charlie, even. Telling him it was okay to trust them. It was okay to lean on them. He shook his head impatiently. It wasn't. They weren't.

There was so goddamned much he couldn't talk about, or think about, or go near now, it made an empty wasteland, howling with the screams of those who'd filled it once, lost now and gone for good. He couldn't fill it. Couldn't imagine trying to. No more deaths on him. No more deaths because of him.

The thought brought another and he remembered the printouts. _Just what the fuck was going on there?_

* * *

_**St Benedict's Church, Wentzville, Missouri**_

"Father Thompson had some … unorthodox ideas," he said, looking at the two men who sat in front of him. "That was why the Litteris Hominae was interested."

"Unorthodox … how?" Sam questioned.

"He believed demons could be saved," the priest said abruptly, not missing the glance the men exchanged.

"What exactly do you mean by 'saved'?"

"A demon is a human soul, twisted and corrupted by its time in Hell," Father Simon explained carefully. "Father Thompson believed that you could … wash that taint away. And restore their humanity."

Dean frowned. "So what? They just stay in whatever mea-schmuck they're possessing and get a ticket upstairs?"

"I wish I knew."

"Okay, with this ritual – it can cure a demon?" Sam asked, leaning forward toward the priest.

"I suppose … if it worked," Father Simon said slowly. "But that night, something went terribly wrong." He looked back at the memory, feeling the terror that had filled him that night rising like a tempest again. "The demon escaped into the world and that … poor old woman … it was … I have never been as frightened as I was then."

He drew in a breath, forcing the memory down, unable to look at the faces of the men. "I know Father Thompson kept trying," he continued. "There were other possessions, experiments, but I couldn't face that – not again."

Dean watched the expressions pass over his face, saw his hands close hard around each other to stifle the tremble in the fingers. The priest had been frightened, he thought. But more than that, the attempts had shaken his faith in everything, in what he'd believed and what he'd counted on. He wondered if the man still had nightmares about what he'd seen.

"And then … a few months later, he was dead," Father Simon said. "He brought the possessed here, to consecrated ground, performing the rituals in the tombs that lie under the church. Sister Francis found him one morning." The priest looked down at his hands, the knuckles whitening. "The police said it was a cult, or a serial killer. They never found anything. It wasn't, of course, nothing human could have done what had been done to him. He was torn apart, limb from limb and his blood coated the walls of the vault and the floor and ceiling."

"Did he keep any –" Sam started to ask, his chest contracting sharply. "Any … uh … records –"

Dean watched as he coughed harshly, catching Sam's fleeting glance into his hand.

"Do you have a bathroom, maybe?" Sam asked, looking back at the priest. Father Simon nodded, gesturing to the vestibule. Getting up, Sam hurried down the aisle, hand over his mouth as the cough grew stronger.

"Is he alright?"

Dean looked back at the priest and stood up. "Ah … no, padre. He's pretty damned far from alright. That's why we're here."

Father Simon's brow creased worriedly. "I don't understand?"

Dean looked past the priest to the altar and the stained glass windows that towered up behind it. "There's a way to close the gates of Hell, Father. A way to seal up every demon for good, forever." He glanced back down the aisle. "My brother is going to do it. It's … taking its toll on him. God likes to test his favourites to death, right?"

Father Simon nodded slowly. "Yes, He does."

"He needs help. We need your help," Dean said quietly. "Whatever you have – whatever you know –"

"I'll get Father Thompson's things for you," the priest said, turning away.

"Thank you."

The late afternoon sunlight slipped in through the glass of the tall windows, illuminating the priest and he stopped after a step and turned back. "You thought it should've been you?"

There was something different about him, Dean thought uneasily, looking into the dark eyes. Something not altogether just Father Simon. The shaft of sunshine haloed the old man's silver hair.

"Yeah, it should've been me," he allowed warily.

"Because you are stronger?"

Dean frowned. "No."

"Expendable?"

Dean looked away, one shoulder lifting in a slight shrug.

"And if you are not? If you are assigned something else that has not yet come to fruition?"

He looked back at the priest. "Who are you?"

"None of us labour entirely alone," Father Simon said, his voice deepening. "None of us can do our jobs in isolation. We all need help, son. We need to trust. We need to feel the strength of others."

Dean stared at him. Father Simon blinked rapidly as the beam of light shifting incrementally from him, lighting up the polished wooden floor at his feet.

"I'll be right back."

_Now what the fuck had that been_, Dean wondered, watching him hurry toward the offices behind the sanctuary.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

The order's retreat was massive, the angel thought, wandering down the halls and looking into each of the rooms. And well-equipped. It might be that the brothers had found a place from which they could fight evil in relative safety.

He stopped in the big kitchen and looked through the cupboards. There was barely anything there. He could do something, he thought suddenly. He could reprovision them while they were gone.

Taking careful note of the surroundings as he left the building, both the real landmarks and the illusory ones, he walked down the road toward the town.

Perhaps Dean was right to keep him at a distance, to not allow him any further chances to betray them, he considered, following the main road in through houses and a small industrial section, looking around for what had to be there – somewhere – stores that people used to resupply themselves.

Perhaps the fleeting friendship he'd experienced had been an object lesson only. A way to learn to understand humanity better, not a series of memories to hold close on their own. It had taken him a long time to get past the prickly exterior of the eldest Winchester, for Dean to accept him and to trust him. And twice now, he'd shattered that trust and the friendship that had come with it. _You didn't trust me_. Dean had said. He hadn't trusted anyone, his mind reeling from the knowledge of what had been done to him, his only comfort the smooth stone he'd held in his hand. And he'd felt Dean's lack of trust in him as well. Justified, of course, but still there.

He didn't understand human relationships. Didn't understand how Dean could forgive Sam for all he'd done, overlook the errors in judgement, understand the reasons behind the choices his brother had made. Everything he knew about the man told him that Dean did not give many chances to people. Sam was perhaps, the exception that proved the rule. But there was something else, something more.

In Purgatory, he'd watched Dean with the vampire, clinically almost. Benny was like no monster he'd encountered – except possibly one. The one he'd sent on her way. Lenore? She and the hard vampire with the liquid, drawling accent had been similar, in some ways. Dean had watched Benny like a hawk, but each time the vampire had wordlessly done his job, had put himself between Dean and an attack, had listened, and offered his own opinion of this or that, he'd seen the man's mistrust crumble a little more, the walls he habitually surrounded himself with, fracture a little deeper.

Benny had earned the trust that had been given to him. Had earned it with his blood and his courage and his honour. And he had not. He'd felt Dean's uneasiness when he'd returned from Purgatory, had sensed the questions that seethed in his friend's mind and the uncertainties, the agonising self-doubts that had filled his heart. He hadn't really known how to assuage them, how to convince the man that he'd done nothing wrong. He must've … somehow … he thought, because Dean had begun to trust him again. Had reached out again when his pain over the slaughter he'd left on Heaven and Earth had been eating at him day and night, the memories static and relentless and horrifying.

The small store was empty and he walked inside. Television had taught him about shopping and he felt confident he could get what they needed. He walked to the row of carts and pulled one free, heading for the far aisle, reviewing everything he knew about human biological and physical needs and the odd things he'd picked up of the brothers' preferences over the years.

He looked at the shelves, taking several items from the row beside him then hesitating for a moment, as he felt a slight interest manifest from close by. Was someone watching him? The knobbled cicatrices he'd carved over himself were still there, softening a little with the paste that Sam had given him, but deeply cut into his vessel's flesh and assuredly protecting him from view. The sensation vanished and he turned back to the shelves, pushing the cart further along, looking down at what he'd put in … shampoo, soap, tissue, some product claiming to be able to remove ninety-eight percent of dangerous bacteria from bathroom surfaces with a single wipe … he nodded to himself and stopped in front of a display of hair-care products. He'd never observed either brother do anything to their hair. But the thick, translucent jelly looked interesting. And they occasionally scraped the facial hair back with some kind of sharp implement. Shrugging, he threw another few items into the cart and headed toward the fresh produce section.

The variety was astonishing, he thought, looking at the brightly-coloured and variously-shaped offerings. Tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, aubergines, avocado, celery, peppers, mushrooms, yams, pumpkin, swedes, turnips, cabbage … he wasn't sure what to get. Perhaps a few of each would satisfy the requirements for most of their dietary mineral and vitamin needs? The cart was becoming more difficult to push as the weight in it increased.

He added a number of items of fruit and continued toward the cold section. Standing beside the selection of cheeses, the sensation of being watched returned. He looked obliquely along the glass-fronted doors, seeing no one else in the store other than the young man standing behind the cash register.

Grabbing a couple of different types of cheese, he hurried along the section, adding milk, butter, yoghurt and cream to the cart. The next fridge held beverages and he recognised the brand that he'd seen both brothers drinking straight away, opening the door and dropping two six packs of the beer on top of the items in the cart.

The next aisle held an assortment of things that he wasn't sure about. Condiments, the label proclaimed. Soups, sauces, jams, jellies, syrups. A bright red bottle seemed familiar and Cas whipped it off the shelf, adding it to the pile that was overflowing the confines of the cart. One wheel had developed a severe wobble, threatening to crash him into the shelving. He moved partly around the side of the cart and pushed harder, dragging the nose of the cart back from the shelves as it veered unsteadily from side to side.

Beside the long counter, he snagged loaves of bread, bags of rolls and stopped in dismay when he saw the pie case. It was empty. Pie, he knew about. Pie was possibly the one thing that might change Dean's current view of him.

"Do you have any pie?" he asked the youth behind the counter.

"If ain't there, we ain't got it," the boy said disinterestedly.

"But … I need pie," Cas muttered. "It's important."

"Not really my problem," the boy said, looking at the cart. "You gonna unload or what?"

"What?"

"Your stuff?"

"Castiel, allow the young man to do his job."

The voice was behind him, and the angel spun around. The man was short, round and smiling slightly at him.

"Have we met?"

"No, but I know who you are," the man said soothingly. "Complete your business," he added, gesturing to the cart. "We have many things to discuss."

"But I need pie," Cas said plaintively.

"There's a bakery on the corner." The man looked at the cart. "We'll stop on the way."

* * *

The aroma from the freshly-baked blueberry pie wafted back over him as he balanced it on one hand, several bags of shopping swinging into him.

"You're Metatron?" he asked, looking at the man beside him. "_The_ Metatron?"

"First time I've seen a seraphim engaged in domestic duties," Metatron said, looking at the bags the angel carried. "And yes, although I prefer Marv when I'm … visible."

"Marv," Cas repeated. "I thought you were protecting the prophet?"

"I am," Metatron said. "He's locked up tight right now. He told me a lot about you."

"He did?"

"Thinks we have a lot in common."

"He does?"

The scribe looked sideways at him. "I can't say that your conversation impresses me."

"What could we possibly have in common?" Castiel said, shifting the weight of the bags in his hands. Something sharp in one of them was stabbing into his leg with every stride.

"We've rebelled against our brothers and we're both on Heaven's Most Wanted list," Metatron said acerbically, taking three of the bags from the angel as he slowed down again.

"Lucifer tried to convince me we were both on the same side for much the same reasons," Cas said dryly.

"I suppose in a sense, you were."

"Didn't convince me."

"No," Metatron agreed. "I've been here for a long time, Castiel. A sabbatical, one might say. And I've ignored what has happened here for a long time. I'm playing catch up so far as the events of this plane are concerned, but I need to talk to someone who can tell me what's happening at home."

"I would like to know what's going on at 'home' myself," Cas said, turning up the narrow laneway.

"I've been looking around," Metatron continued. "Crawling through a few divine nooks and crannies, but from what I can see … without the archangels, it's a mess. Open warfare."

"I thought … Naomi was running things now?" Cas slowed down and looked down at the man beside him.

"Is that what she told you?" Metatron asked him. "Naomi is leading one of many factions, Castiel. And she is not interested in putting things in order. It's only a matter of time before that warfare begins to leak out, and spread here. They are fighting, betraying each other, killing each other … it's all broken."

"I know, I'm the one who broke it," Cas said bluntly. "There was a time when I thought I could lead them, teach them to think for themselves, to become – I was mistaken."

"Angels are not built for free will, Castiel."

"No," Cas acknowledged. "I have tried to atone, I have done penance, I have looked for a way to repair what I have done in pride and ignorance. I have betrayed my friends to keep our secrets, but I've … just failed … and it has all been for nothing."

The scribe looked at him. "Not for nothing, Castiel. I've never heard of an angel doing penance for their sins."

"Usually they do not sin," Cas reminded him acidly.

"Lucifer did," Metatron countered mildly. "And he never repented. You are, I think, the right one."

"The right one for what?"

"To prevent the possibility of the situation getting any worse."

Cas stopped as he recognised the small utility hut. "And how are we supposed to do that?"

"Close the gates of Heaven," Metatron said, handing him the bags. "Lock them in and keep them contained."

"What?"

"Eugenie's, in Avon Lake," the scribe told him clearly. "Great crepes."

The beating of wings was loud in the narrow, mist-filled valley and Cas looked around in frustration. "Metatron! Marv!"

* * *

Dean looked at the grocery bags surrounding the table in the library. "Think he had this home-delivered?"

"He got you pie," Sam said, glancing down at the table and the pie that sat there.

Dean scowled. "Anyone can get pie," he said shortly, then reconsidered. "Except you."

"He's not here now, think he blew town?"

"Sounds like him," Dean said, feeling his mouth fill with saliva at the smell. He looked down at the rest of the bags. "What the hell did he buy?"

Sam glanced down. "One of everything, I think."

"Well, I'm eating this before it gets cold," Dean said, picking up the pie and the bags he could see were food-related and heading for the kitchen. "We need to go through that stuff of Father Thompson's."

"No argument," Sam said, gathering up the rest of the bags.

* * *

"Fridge is full," Dean said, balancing two plates in his hands as he came back into the library ten minutes later. "Mostly stuff we'll never eat, but it's full."

"You need to look at this," Sam said, pushing a soft-cover notebook across the table to his brother as he took the plate from him. "I don't know if I can eat this."

"Try," Dean said, around a mouthful. He set the plate down and flipped open the cover, skimming over the contents as the pie disappeared steadily.

"Says here he recorded all of the demon cure tests," Dean said, looking up at his brother. "We got the film in there?"

Sam nodded, lifting out the reel. "This is the last one," he said. "Date's two days before he died. Audio only."

"Thread it up," Dean said, passing the notebook back to his brother.

* * *

"_The date is August 3__rd__, 1958,"_ Father Thompson's voice was clear on the tape. _"This is trial nineteen, hour one. My subject is Peter Kent. Mr Kent is the father of two young sons, and three weeks ago, he was possessed by a demon."_

The volume changed slightly as Father Thompson moved away from the microphone, and Sam adjusted it up.

"_I'm going to ask you a question now,"_ the priest said. _"When you crawled into Mr Kent, and ate his children … how did it feel?"_

"_Orgasmic!"_ The demon snarled back at him, then screamed, the speakers of the eight-track crackling in protest.

"_The first dose has been administered,"_ Father Thompson said, his voice raised over the demon's.

Dean looked up. "Do we know what the padre was dosing the demon with?"

"Uh, yeah," Sam said, reading through the notebook. "His own purified blood."

"Purified – how?" Dean asked.

"Before he started, Father Thompson fasted – forty days and forty nights," Sam read, his brow creasing a little. "He didn't sleep for the same length of time, at least, no more than … one hour a night," he continued more slowly. "He went to his bishop and confessed his sins, receiving absolution …"

"He didn't eat or sleep for forty days?" Dean leaned on the table. He couldn't remember how long it been since Sam had eaten a full meal or slept a full night.

"The confession and the penance he was required to do took two days. In that time he didn't eat or sleep at all," Sam said, chewing on the edge of his lip.

"_This is trial nineteen, hour two,"_ the priest's voice said over the speakers. _"When you ate his children, how did it feel?"_

"_Freeing!"_ The demon shrieked as the needle went into its neck, and through the hiss of the tape, Sam and Dean heard it cursing the priest.

"_The second dose has been administered,"_ Father Thompson said.

"_Hour four."_

"_How did it feel?"_

"_Kiss my ass!"_

"_The sixth dose has been administered."_

"_Stop! Please!"_

Sam looked across at his brother. Dean's eyes were closed as he listened.

"_How –"_

Shrieking, bubbling screams poured from the speakers.

"_Did it –"_

"_The eighth dose has been administered."_

"_No, stop, no!"_

"_Feel?"_

"_Stop! No – no, no,"_ the demon's voice dissolved into sobs, the harsh indrawn breaths clearly audible on the tape.

Dean leaned across the table, staring at the machine. There was no mistaking the agonised torment in that voice. No mistaking the bone-deep pain he could hear.

"_On hour eight, the subject is prepped,"_ Father Thompson said.

There was a crash on the tape, and both men leaned closer to the speakers, eyes half-shut as they tried to visualise what was happening.

"_Ego præcipio tibi ut dimittam vos, et cogere ténuit innocentis. Abluti estis –"_

"_Purgatio!_"

The slap of the priest's hand over the face of the demon could be heard under the final shout. _"PURGATE!"_

The demon screamed, its voice rising higher and higher. And then everything fell silent.

"_When you ate his children, how did it feel?"_

"_They were screaming …"_ the voice was no longer the deep, harsh growl they'd heard before. Peter Kent's voice, Sam thought, his real voice.

"_And I laughed –"_ the voice hitched, breath seizing in the throat. _"I don't know why I – I don't – I wasn't happy – it wasn't – it was relief – relief from the pain …"_

Sam's gaze flicked up to his brother's face, catching the tail end of a twitch as Dean turned away, his eyes closing.

"_Oh god, oh my god, I was a monster, a monster –"_

"_But now you are a man again."_ The priest's voice was strong, firm. _"You have been saved."_

"_No, I – he's in here, with me, he hates me so much – I don't –"_

Sam's hand slid across the controls of the machine and turned off the tape. "Did he just – cure a demon?"

Dean looked at the tape, feeling memory pushing against his walls. He didn't have the time for a one-on-one with himself. "Maybe," he said slowly. "Can we take this hoodoo on a test drive?"

"Uh … yeah," Sam said, flipping through the pages of the notebook. "I have the exorcism here, all we need is the blood, consecrated ground and a demon." He looked at his brother, brow furrowing a little as he saw his stillness. "So we summon a demon, trap it –"

"Or we use one we've already tagged," Dean said, turning to look at him. "Do we still have Dad's old Army Field Surgeon's kit?"

"In the trunk," Sam said, the furrows deepening. "Why?"

"I think it's time we put Humpty back together again."

"Abaddon?"

"Who else?"

"We can't cure Abaddon," Sam said. "Henry told us, remember? She was one of the first-fallen – a Fallen angel. No soul."

"Crap!"

"We need to find another one."

"Ya think?" Dean snapped, starting as the printer behind them whirred into life, another few pages falling into the bins.

* * *

_**Avon Lake, Ohio**_

Cas looked across the quiet street at the row of stores that fronted the other side. Behind him, Lake Huron stretched out, a cool breeze from the water ruffling the awning edges and forcing the customers into weighting their napkins with their water glasses.

"Picturesque," he remarked to the angel sitting across from him. "But I don't suppose you wanted a change of scenery. Why are we here?"

"All in good time," Metatron said, looking up as a waitress brought a plate to the table. "Thank you."

"Can I get you anything?"

Castiel looked up at her. "Coffee, thank you."

"On the way," she said, turning and leaving them.

"You eat?"

"Like the best of them," Metatron admitted, glancing down at his portly figure. "You think I got this just looking at food?" He looked up at Cas. "You should integrate a little more. Some of it's not all that bad."

"I've done that," Cas said shortly. "It was a mistake."

"But coffee's okay?"

"What did you mean – close the gates of Heaven?"

"The tablets were meant for humanity," Metatron said, tucking a mouthful into his cheek. "Safeguards to keep greater powers from disturbing their evolution when they were ready."

"They're not ready now."

"No, but the Winchesters have set themselves the task of closing Hell and are succeeding," Metatron pointed out. "And there is nothing to prevent us from using the angel tablet to lock Heaven down and keep the war from spilling out down here, as it did before, as I'm sure you'll remember."

Cas looked away. He remembered. "What do we have to do?"

"The tablet details three trials, that the contender must finish before being able to close the gates." He looked up, catching the angel's expression. "I transcribed those tablets, Castiel. They were not something I could forget."

"You're going to complete these trials?"

"No," Metatron said. "I can't. I am not a warrior. I am – I was – the scribe only." He looked across the lake behind the angel. "But you can. You are Castiel; you served under Gabriel and Michael. You rescued the soul of Dean Winchester from the seventh level of Hell. You've fought archdemons and you've smote the ungodly. You can do it."

"You think this a true atonement, Metatron?" Cas looked down at the table top. "I am the one who caused these problems. Am I also the one to fix them?"

"I think that there are no coincidences in this universe, Castiel." The scribe picked up another forkful of crepe and apple. "You understand that this is not going to be easy?"

"What is the first trial?"

"To cut out the heart of a nephilim," Metatron said casually, cutting through his crepe.

Cas was silent, staring at him. He looked up and shrugged as he saw the expression on the angel's face.

"They're an abomination, Castiel," he said quietly. "Even the Qaddiysh offspring."

"They were allowed to teach, to join humanity," Cas argued weakly. "And without those bloodlines, we would not have had the vessels at all."

"He sent the Flood to wipe them out."

"But they were not," Cas said, leaning across the table. "And if that was not His Will, then are you suggesting something else was involved?"

"No," Metatron said, shaking his head. "Free will was extended to the Qaddiysh, as to mankind. Souls or no souls."

"Then you are talking of murder." Cas looked away. "Another murder."

"He designed the trials, Castiel."

"Where would I even find one?" The angel gestured around vaguely. "There are thousands, but they have hidden themselves well."

"Across the street, in the bookstore," Metatron said prosaically, sweeping the last mouthful from his plate. "You see her?"

Through the plate glass window, several figures were visible and Cas focussed on them. At the centre of the small group, one woman was taller than the others, slender and graceful in a way that humans were really not.

"She doesn't appear to be doing harm," the angel muttered.

"She's not," the scribe agreed. "Making a living, minding her own business."

"Then it is murder."

"Oh yes," Metatron said. "Her life is balanced against the fate of humanity, that Heaven be closed before their anger reaches this plane. I told you it wasn't going to be easy."

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

"Any signs close by?" Dean walked into the library, another armful of files thumping onto the table as he looked at Sam.

"Nothing so far," Sam said, peering at the files. "What are they?"

"'57 and '58, background checks," Dean said, pushing a pile across to him. "I'm starving, can you eat?"

"Maybe," Sam hedged, opening the top file. "Something."

"Something comin' up."

Sam heard his footsteps leave the room, tracking him by the sound down the hallway vaguely as he read the opening summaries. At least they didn't have to wade through the entire file, the scholars had been organised and efficient, and all the pertinent facts were stated briefly at the front of each case.

He stopped skimming when he reached the write-up of Father Thompson's case. Someone had gone to talk to the police, to the coroner and mortician about the priest's body. Father Simon hadn't been kidding when he'd described the death, he thought, looking at the crime scene photographs and reading between the lines of the coroner's report. No one in the town had ever seen anything like it before, and he could feel their fear coming off the pages in waves under the formal, terse language of the report.

One eyewitness had seen a tall, dark-haired, dark-skinned woman enter the church the night before the body was found. There was no follow up to the account, and he reached for the laptop, swivelling it toward it him and calling up the federal crime database.

On August 6th in 1958, a tall, dark-haired, dark-skinned woman had been found dead in St Louis. There hadn't been a mark on her externally. But no one organ or length of tissue had been intact when the local medical examiner had done the autopsy. Just a soup of blood and pulverised flesh which had spilled out with the 'Y' incision.

Abaddon had changed vessels, he thought. The timing was too close to the massacre of the scholars in Iola. When she'd killed them, she'd been wearing the body of the hunter, Josie Sands, a hunter known to the order, trusted by them. And Sands had been doing the filming for the priest until he'd gone solo. It seemed likely enough that he'd talked about the hunter – or that the demon had seen her in his mind. How had she gotten around an experienced – _elite_ was the term Henry had used – hunter? She was more powerful than an ordinary demon, but still …

He got up and walked down the hall and the stairs to the archives level, moving along the row of old-fashioned timber filing cabinets until he came to the one holding the files for all the people the Lebanon order had dealt with. Josie's file was there. Pulling it out, he walked back to the library.

Born in 1930, orphaned at the age of sixteen. Her past was chequered, and even the order hadn't filled in all the holes. He skimmed through the cases that the order had for her, brows rising slightly as he realised the extent of her experience. But Hell hadn't been as active in the previous century as it had become in this one, he thought. And demons had not been the primary targets of the order's hunters.

He looked up as his brother walked back in, carrying a couple of plates, the mouth-watering scent of burgers filling the room. He wanted to eat, he was dying to eat. But as Dean put the plate down in front of him, the smells began to change and he felt his stomach clench tightly as a whiff of decomposition hit him from the direction of the burger.

Dean was looking at him quizzically.

"I might be able to eat a bit when it's cold," Sam said, pushing the plate away from him. "When I can't smell it."

"What's this?" Dean set his own plate on the table and dragged a thick file toward him.

"Those are the news reports that have been coming in the last three days," Sam said, looking back at the file.

Opening it as he took a bite, Dean flicked the pages over, one by one. He swallowed after skimming five of the articles and put the burger back on the plate. "This right?"

Sam looked at the file and nodded. "Seventeen now."

"Is this the order they came in?"

"They're in date order – date the reports were filed, not the dates we saved them."

"What the fuck is going on here?"

"Got me," Sam said, shaking his head. "There's nothing to connect them. They're being hit randomly as well."

"Well, we gotta figure out who might be next," Dean said. "We gotta remember some of these people, at least – warn them, give them hex bags, something!"

"Alright," Sam said. "Alright. What about the psych hospital? The wraith?"

"Who'd we save there?" Dean frowned as he tried to retrieve the distinctly blurred and chaotic memories of the place.

"All of them, the wraith would've gone through every patient," Sam said, his fingers rubbing his temples gently.

"Where was that?"

"Oklahoma."

The memory of the hospital's drive suddenly came bright and clear to Dean. "Glenwood Springs."

"Right."

"Okay, I know it, it was Ketchum," Dean said, getting up. "Let's go."

"What are we gonna do there, Dean?" Sam asked, following him up the stairs.

"I don't know yet," Dean said, opening the door. "I'm making this up as I go."


	45. Chapter 45 Trial and Suffering

**Chapter 45 Trial and Suffering**

* * *

_**Ketchum, Oklahoma**_

"Sonofabitch," Dean said softly as they drove around the corner and saw the barricades.

"It might not be that bad," Sam countered, peering up the road. He was kidding himself as well as his brother, he thought, looking at the sea of flashing lights that ran along the road bordering the hospital grounds as far as he could see.

"Right." Dean pulled off close to the Road Closed trestles, killing the engine. "Ten cop cars, six ambulances, fire department …" He looked down the road, catching sight of the square, black truck halfway down. "SWAT."

"Come on," Sam said, opening his door and getting out, leaning back in to grab the federal identification from the glove box. "We can find out what happened."

Dean sighed and reached over to snag a badge. _What had happened was that Crowley had gotten here first_, he thought sourly, sliding out of the car and shutting the door. What had happened was that somehow the demon had known about this place, known what they'd done here and had decided to undo it all. What had happened was that they were too goddamned late. Again.

He followed Sam past the barricade, opening the wallet and flashing his tin at the flatfoot standing there. The buildings looked intact and he wondered exactly how the demon had manipulated this scene, the delusions and draining of the brain-fluid had been the hallmarks of the wraith.

"What happened here?" Sam asked the detective, flicking a glance back to Dean.

"One of the patients went nuts," the detective said with a shrug. "Got hold of an axe, got out of the locked room and started hacking into the other patients, the staff, everyone."

"Have you got him?"

"Her, actually," the detective corrected, turning to look at Dean's badge. "No, holed up in there, shrieking to blazes about Hell and demons and a bunch of other crap." He turned to look at the black truck up the street. "SWAT's going in, probably in five minutes."

"Have you got a body count?"

"Not really," the detective said, gesturing vaguely at a white comms truck parked on the other side of the road. "We plugged into their security cameras okay, but there's a lot of interference in there, for some reason."

Dean looked at Sam, the same thought in both of their minds. _Demons_.

"Thanks, detective," Sam said hurriedly, turning and walking fast back toward the car.

Dean lengthened his stride to match his brother's. "Think we can grab one?"

"If they stay in the meatsuits and don't just smoke out," Sam said. He felt in his pocket for his phone, slowing as his fingers came up empty. "Where the hell is my phone?"

Dean glanced back at him. "No clue, come on, we've got what we need in the trunk, and we've got less than five minutes to get around the back and grab one before that team goes in and takes everyone out."

They were almost to the car when the first explosion took out the front of the building, the warm, expanding air pushed outward from it knocking both to the ground and setting the vehicles closer to the building on fire.

"What the fuck?" Dean rolled over, shaking his head as a ringing noise persisted in his ears.

"That wasn't the SWAT team," Sam said, crawling over to him.

"No way."

The second explosion blew out the southern wing and they ran doubled over for the car as flaming debris whistled by and arced overhead. Over the ringing, Dean could hear screams, shouting, gunfire and the random cracks of ammunition heating up in a fire and going off on its own.

Leaning around the front tyre, Dean looked along the ground at the hospital. Two men staggered out from the side of the building, both burning. The front was gone, exposing the interior warren of rooms, broken gas pipes burning like monstrous blue torches, water mains pipes shooting fountains into the air. The side of the building furthest from them was a pile on the ground, brick and tile and metal and plastic and timber smashed so thoroughly that he couldn't recognise what anything had once been. Four of the police cars and one ambulance were burning ferociously. The SWAT truck and the communications van were both lying on their sides.

"He knew we were here!" Sam said loudly beside him. He looked at his brother, sitting up as he saw the blood trickling from Sam's ear.

"Christ, can you hear me?" he asked Sam, lifting a hand and turning Sam's head to one side.

"Just." Sam nodded, then winced. "Was this for us, Dean?"

"I don't know."

"Because we came here?"

"Sam, I don't know," Dean said, rolling to his feet and going around to the trunk to get the first aid kit. He watched the building but the pyrotechnics seemed to be over. Whoever had been still alive in the building was almost certainly not now. And the demon had taken a number of the civilians along with them.

Taking the kit, he crouched beside Sam, sluicing the blood away from the side of his face.

Sam looked at him tiredly. Had Crowley known or had it been an unlucky coincidence? He saw Dean start slightly as a phone rang shrilly, somewhere close by. His phone.

"Where is it?"

"Must be in the car," Dean said, looking at the door behind his brother. "Move over."

Sam moved and Dean opened the door, looking along the seat. The ringing kept on and he saw the phone on the floor of the passenger well, stretching out along the seat to pick it up. He glanced at the window as he slithered back out. It was open a little. He couldn't remember if it'd been open before or not. Handing the phone to his brother, he closed the door and leaned back against it.

Sam frowned slightly as he saw the caller ID, accepting the call and switching to speaker, turning it so that Dean could see it.

"Hello, Moose."

"Crowley," Sam said tightly.

"Just a social call, see what we've all been up to," the demon's voice drawled loudly. "Have you noticed the news lately?"

Dean looked at Sam.

"How'd you find them, Crowley?"

"Oh, so you have been keeping up," Crowley said, his voice rising slightly. "So many people. A shame that your efforts didn't really last the distance, isn't it?"

"Is there a point you're trying to make?" Sam grated.

"Oh yes, there is," Crowley said, the whisper of his clothes clear over the line as he straightened in his chair. "Isn't it obvious, even to you two? I'm killing everyone you've ever saved. The damsels in distress, the innocent whippersnappers, the would-be vampire chow. And in answer to your earlier question, Mutt, I have my sources, and a cracking research team."

"Why?"

"Ah … here it is, at last," Crowley said slowly. "Why … because I can, of course. I'm going to gut one person, every twelve hours until you bring me the demon tablet and stop this whole … trials … nonsense."

"Got a head start, didn't you?" Dean snapped.

"That was just to get your attention," Crowley said calmly. "We're running to a schedule now."

"We don't have the tablet," Sam said curtly. "Kevin took it and we –"

"I had Kevin," Crowley reminded them sharply. "And someone took him back. The word from the Cloud is that it wasn't Heaven, so either he's with you two lugs, or you'd better fucking find him, tout bloody suite! You've got one day to get that tablet."

Dean stared at Sam. _Word from the cloud?_ Sam shook his head.

"A day? That's not enough –" Sam said.

"It's all you'll get, time's a wasting, Moose," Crowley said coolly. "I'll be watching, and I'll be in touch if you don't seem to be following the game plan."

Sam looked at the phone as the call cut out.

"Word from Heaven?" Dean closed his eyes. _Crowley had a snitch in Heaven?_

"We can take him the tablet," Sam said, putting the phone in his pocket. "But it'll take time."

"We need to get ahead of him, Sam."

"We can't'," Sam countered frustratedly. "Do you remember the names of the people we've saved in the last eight years? Where they lived? What if they've moved? A lot did anyway, as soon as we left … however it is he's finding these people, he's had time to think it all out, and to make sure we can't get in front."

"We gonna leave these people in the wind?" Dean asked furiously. "Cut 'em loose and pretend they don't matter?"

"No, of course not," Sam said, running a hand impatiently through his hair. "We'll stall, a bit longer. Tell him we've found Kevin but it's gonna take a bit longer, hope he puts some demons on our asses."

* * *

_**Wichita, Kansas**_

Sylvia Freeman pushed her glasses higher up her nose as she looked at the body parts lying on the stainless steel table in front of her.

"Whaddya think?"

She glanced at the sheriff dismissively. "About the cause of death?"

"No, that much I got," Sheriff Henderson said sourly. "About the perps."

_Perps_, she thought tiredly. "I've got a lotta questions about this body, Sheriff, a lot more than just who did it." She walked around the table, gesturing at the head. "The victim was alive when the head was decapitated."

"Alright," the Sheriff allowed warily. Doc Freeman had a mean tongue and no hesitation in using it.

"A single blow, and the tool that did it was a long blade, razor-sharp," she continued, staring at the edges of the cut.

"So, maybe some psycho's got a sword?"

"No," Dr Freeman snapped. "Most swords are fine-bladed, this blade was thick, with a single edge. And it was long enough to cut through all the tendons, cartilage and bone of the neck, but not very long." She chewed on her bottom lip. "The blood did not flow out of this victim, Sheriff," she added after a moment. "There is no lividity, no decomposition, no sign at all that this woman wasn't alive and breathing up to a few hours ago."

"Okay."

"But the owner of the building site, and the forensics team who tested the concrete, agree that the concrete has been in place at least four months, more likely five."

"Maybe … uh … airtight …?"

"No," she snapped again, gesturing at the tray beside the Sheriff. "In addition to the decapitation, I found that in her upper palate."

He turned and looked into the small kidney-shaped stainless dish on the tray. The slug had been washed and it gleamed against the satin sheen of the brushed steel. Picking it up with a pair of tweezers, he stared at the design that had been carved into the soft end.

"Satanists, maybe?"

"There are no defensive wounds, no hair or fibres, no evidence of any kind," Dr Freeman said, walking around the table again. "I'll bag what I find, Sheriff, but it will be at least two days before I'm ready to release this body."

_Photographs, chem tests, biopsies, blood and all sorts of tissue tests_, she thought frantically. _This victim was an impossibility_.

"No one is to have access to the morgue until I'm done, you understand?" She looked at the Sheriff who looked up guiltily. "And you'd better call Quantico, as soon as you're back in the office. I've already called in the CDC."

"The feds? Why?"

"Because this is not a simple case, Henderson, and we are not going to treat it as if it is."

Nodding, he turned away, hurrying out of the cold, sterile-chemical-smelling room. Feds would take the collar as sure as sure, he thought. But maybe that would be a relief this time. He couldn't think where to start looking.

Dr Freeman turned away from the table and settled herself at the long counter on the other side of the room. The blood was already on the slide and she bent over the microscope, adjusting the focus.

On the table behind her, the eyes of the head popped open, a bright green, cat-shaped and glinting with amusement. They looked down, able to see the length of the body lying separated by only an inch or two. Closing her eyes again, she focussed her attention on drawing the energy she needed, pulling it through the gaps and cracks and fissures between the planes, feeding it into the cells and blood vessels and nerves of the meatsuit. All back together again. _Finally_.

Rubbing her neck, Dr Freeman sat back and made another note on the pad beside her. The blood cells were healthy, undamaged, fully viable, yet not living. And not decomposing. It was too incredible for her take in properly.

The slur of a footstep behind her caught her attention, and she turned on the stool, eyes widening in disbelief as she saw the woman standing there.

"It's the discovery of a lifetime, isn't it?" Abaddon said gently to her, a small smile playing around her mouth.

"How?"

"The better question is always 'why'," the demon said, stepping forward, her hand closing around the doctor's neck and flicking sideways. The snap of the vertebrae was loud in the silent room, and Dr Freeman's eyes glazed over as the demon lowered her to the floor. "Why is so much more interesting."

She could smell them, distantly. Couldn't see them. Not yet, perhaps not at all. They had marks on them, some deep inside, some on the surface, all designed through the centuries to deflect the eyes of her kind, both her kinds. But she could smell them. They had been close and afraid and she never forgot a scent. It was a different time and a different world, and she could feel the changes in the planes above and below, changes that would dictate her next move. But first, she would follow them and find them and devour them at her leisure.

* * *

_**Avon Lake, Ohio**_

In the semi-gloom of the twilit streets, Castiel watched the woman lock the store and turn to walk along the lakeshore path, her stride long and loose and unhurried. It had been simple enough to find her home, and look along the possible routes she might take to reach it.

He wondered how the humans who saw her reacted to the symmetry of her face, the luminescence of her skin, the vividness of her eyes. To his eyes, she did not look human. But humanity had a huge variation within its gene pool, and he supposed that people had become used to improbable images, particularly in the last couple of decades when appearance had assumed a far greater importance than ever before in the history of the race.

The nephilim had been hated and feared for more than two thousand years, both by humanity and angels. Humanity called them giants and sorcerers and monsters. Many writers had used the legends as the basis of their works of fiction, races of long-lived, powerful humans, with abilities and strengths beyond the ken of normal folk. The angels simply hated them, a loathing for what was considered in the Eighth Choir to be an unnatural and distasteful union between God's sons and the daughters of Adam.

Like this plane, Heaven had lost the origins of many things. When Metatron had disappeared, much history had been misunderstood. Sometimes deliberately. Sometimes not. The scribe loathed the nephilim as much as any of the higher ranked seraphim, without knowing why, without being able to search for the reasons that the angels who'd chosen to Fall, to teach and guide, had done so with their Father's blessing.

Abomination. Only the cambion was regarded as being worse. Perhaps rightly so, since until they reached adulthood, their power was extraordinary, capable of wiping out everything in Creation.

The woman stopped in the path, looking directly at the tree behind which he stood.

"I can see you," she called out. "I know what you are."

"And we you," Metatron said, stepping onto the path. "Abomination."

Cas watched her face smooth out. "I am the child of God's creations. There is no shame in me."

"There should be!"

"Metatron," Cas said warningly. He looked at her. "The Flood was to have to wiped you all out."

"Then it is odd that we were warned, isn't it?"

He frowned at that information. "Warned?"

She looked at him carefully. "You do not have all the knowledge, angel. Nor you, scribe. I have done nothing wrong. I have broken no law, of Heaven or Earth. I'm just trying to live my life … teaching … sharing the knowledge of my kind."

"We know," Cas said slowly. "And I am sorry."

He stepped closer to her and the hilt of the sword dropped into his hand.

"You will be," she promised him softly.

He didn't see the blow coming, her fist, smaller than his but steel against his vessel's ribcage. The bone flexed sickeningly and he stumbled back, one arm drawn up to protect the still-healing injuries in his abdomen. He saw her eyes flicker to the arm and cursed himself for showing her his weakness, lifting the sword in his hand.

Metatron stared. She was faster than a striking snake, he thought in astonishment, the attack blurred against his retinas. And strong, much stronger than either angel had possibly conceived. He saw Castiel stagger backward as her blows rained down on him, saw her grip the edges of his coat and lift him, pivoting on her heel to swing the angel into the trees.

He saw Castiel's sword fall from his hand at the same time as the nephilim did, and both ran for it.

Cas shook his head, levering himself onto an elbow as Metatron launched himself at the woman's back, knocking her to the ground. He rolled onto his knees as she sprang upright, picking up the scribe and throwing him across the path and into the fence that paralleled the lake, his fingers closing tightly around the sword when she ran for the angel.

The nephilim hoisted Metatron easily up the fence with her right hand, her fingers closed tightly around his vessel's throat. The scribe heard the bones creaking under the increasing pressure, the cartilage bending as she pushed harder against his windpipe with her thumb.

"I will show you why we are called 'abomination', angel," she whispered to him, her face inches from his. "Why we are called 'evil'."

She lifted her left hand, the fingers tight together, forming a point, angled upward toward his heart.

"We have the heart of an angel, scribe, and the soul of man," she said. "You have no idea of the power that gives us."

The forward thrust stopped as her fingers touched his diaphragm, her hand falling limply away and the hand holding him springing open as Castiel's sword tip prised the gap between the ribs wider and he reached into her chest from the back.

"I'm afraid that merely having a soul does not guarantee entrance to Heaven," he said, his hand closing around the beating organ and yanking it free of the blood vessels. "One must repent, truly, for that."

He let her fall, opening his hand and dropping the heavy muscle onto her body.

Against the fence, Metatron rubbed his throat gingerly, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs.

"The spell, Castiel," he croaked, handing the angel the paper on which it was written.

* * *

_**I-44 E**_

The black car sped across the concrete seams, the steady beat matching his pulse, matching his breathing. Dean glanced down at the dash. Another couple of hours and they would have to stop. The car needed gas and he was running on empty too.

_The living room had been lit by a single lamp and the glow of the laptop's screen. He'd looked through the news reports, seeing event after event. Flight 401, crashed. No survivors. Andrea Barr and her son, drowned in suspicious circumstances. Tommy Collins, his sister Haley and their little brother, along with the guide who'd led them into Blackwater Ridge, all dead, bodies never recovered. And before that, before he'd gone to see Sam, all the people he'd saved with his father, all the people John Winchester had saved on his own. All dead. Because he'd wanted to have a normal life. To have his family._

It hadn't been like that, not in the dream, not in the reality. For a long time, he'd seen what he did, what he'd grown up doing, as a heroic life. A worthy life. He'd pushed himself to the limits and come out alive, time after time. And at twenty-two and twenty-five and twenty-seven, that had all seemed fine. The good of the many outweighed the good of the few, after all. And he'd told Metatron that the responsibility came with the job. It wasn't something that you could quit, or retire from. It was for life. However long that life was.

Crowley had no idea of what those people actually meant to him. Not just a means of justifying what he did, or what he felt. Not just a way to get up and face himself in the mirror every single morning. Not just lives saved randomly, given the luck of having a hunter in the area when something truly evil came out of the dark. What he'd done, what his father had done, what Sam had done, had been to make a difference in the balance of power. And Crowley couldn't wipe that away, no matter how many he killed, how many lives he cut short. Every single one of those people had been living on borrowed time when they'd got there. And a lot they hadn't been able to save. One man had lost his life unknowingly, the reaper snatching it to give to him. He couldn't change that. Couldn't undo it or make it right. And a pretty, innocent girl had died because they'd put a stop to the binding spell controlling that reaper.

_A sacrifice is only meaningful if it is freely made._

The townsfolk of Burkittsville hadn't realised that. He wondered vaguely if the couple he'd intercepted were still alive. He didn't remember catching their names. Couldn't think how Crowley would be able to find them. They'd only been passing through.

There was guilt. There would always be guilt. These people had lived because of him, because of them. And they were dying because of him, because of them. The guilt was something that lived with him and slept with him and breathed with him twenty-four-seven anyway. _I'm not strong enough. I'm not the man either of our dads wanted me to be. Find someone else. It's not me. _The guilt was the price he paid for their suffering. It was the cost of doing business. It was what reminded him that he was a hunter. Not a normal man. Not entitled to anything.

He couldn't turn away from the grand prize now. Closing the gates of Hell, keeping the demons locked down and away, that would alter the balance of power forever, change the lives of millions. Would save families. He thought of Metatron's warning. He would give anything to do that, no matter what it cost him. No matter how the world was changed forever after.

* * *

Sam watched the reflections of the headlights light up and pass over the wet road, splintering into shards of gold, smearing over the puddles on the concrete. His veins burned fiercely and he could feel the liquid pooling in his lungs, getting deeper. Everything they'd done, everything he'd done, gone and wasted and nothing left. He remembered Haley's face, when they'd found her brother, how frightened she'd been and how lit up with relief that at least, if they were going to die, it would be all together. He remembered Amanda Walker and the soul-deep thanks in the look she'd sent him, when they'd been safe on the ground again. He still had the sense memory in his hands and arms of Andrea's body, slick and wet from the tub that he'd wrestled her from. The patients at Glenwood. The prisoners at Green River. The way Dean had looked, cutting Carolyn Smyth down and carrying her to the car, his brother determined that she would live.

He had been driven by revenge. First Jessica. His father. Dean. Bobby. Compelled into a life that had no comfort, no safety, no peace or place to rest. Swallowed by self-loathing for the thing that he was becoming. The thing that he had become. Afraid. Alone. All for the people who they knew were getting on with their lives, getting over the nightmares, finding a way to forget. He wanted to kill Crowley so badly that his blood was boiling inside him.

There was no way to get ahead of the demon. However it was that Crowley had found these people, it was one they couldn't circumvent. There were too many. They were everywhere. And Crowley had the power to cut short their lives in any number of ways. He rubbed a hand over his face, pushing his hair back, letting out his breath.

"Gonna stop at the next motel," Dean muttered beside him.

He nodded. He couldn't sleep but he was so tired. Just being still would be a help. He could feel something, buzzing against the boundary of his mind.

* * *

_**Heaven**_

The auburn-haired angel leapt to her feet, the chair crashing over onto the hard, smooth floor behind her. On the other side of the desk, the two angels backed away from the fury in her face, glancing at each other nervously.

"Did you feel that!?" she demanded, striding around the desk, staring at the glass wall fixedly. "Did you!?"

"There was a death," one ventured. "On the material plane."

"Not just any death!" she snarled, sweeping past them and yanking open the heavy glass door. "An angel performing an execution."

The two exchanged another nervous glance and followed her down the long, white hall. They had no idea what she was talking about – or where she was going – but the constructs built in their minds demanded complete obedience.

* * *

_**Lonely Pine Motel, St Clair, Missouri**_

Dean looked around the plain room, holding the bottle in his hand, his gaze searching out all points of entry. The back of his neck was prickling slightly.

"What do we know about Crowley?" Sam asked, brushing his teeth in the bathroom, the door open.

"We know he's an underhanded, slimy, double-crossing sonofabitch demon," Dean said distractedly.

"Right, okay, but what else?" Sam spat out the toothpaste and rinsed his mouth. "We know he was human."

"If you could call it that," Dean muttered, walking around the perimeter of the room again. The prickling was getting stronger.

"He made a deal and was taken to Hell in 1690," Sam said as he came out of the bathroom. "Crossroad demon from then on."

"Sam –"

"Bear with me, just a sec," Sam told him. "He's an ordinary human-souled demon."

"You want to cure him?" Dean turned to look at him, screwing the lid back onto the bottle and tucking it back into his duffle.

"Can't summon him, and for some reason, the pendulum spell doesn't work on him now either," Sam said, shaking his head. "He found a way to break through the wards around Kevin in Missouri. Still don't know how he did that. But he can't see us."

"Not all the time," Dean agreed cautiously.

"Not in Kansas," Sam stated certainly.

"Alright, where's this getting us?"

"We can't beat him on this round, Dean." Sam looked at the floor. "He's the King of Hell. And we don't even know what that means, not really. We don't know what power he has."

"He's scared, Sam. He's scared we're gonna succeed. He's run on a couple of occasions I can recall," Dean said. "Has to be reason. Why not just kill us if it was that easy?"

"Maybe. But we can't find him, can't figure out who he's gonna kill next. We got one option and that's to do what he asks." He looked up at his brother. "Or know that everyone he's killing, that's all on us."

* * *

Outside the room, the night was warm and still. The leaves of one of the shrubs that lined the path rustled softly. _Crowley? The crossroads demon? the salesman? King of Hell? That was … impossible. A joke. A bad joke_.

Abaddon edged closer to the open window, closing her eyes.

"Maybe," Dean said. "But all we need is one demon and we can stop this for good, Sammy."

"And we can't find a demon," Sam retorted. "And for all we know, that's Crowley's doing too."

"He wants the demon tablet, he doesn't know that we already know the last trial."

"Not one demon sign or omen or portent since he started killing, Dean," Sam said bitterly. "Not one."

"We're not giving up."

_Oh but you are_, the archdemon thought mockingly. _Just don't know it yet_.

She rose to her feet and walked to the door, lifting her hands abruptly and striding through as the thin wood exploded into the room.

Dean rolled to his feet, looking at the woman standing in the doorway.

"I told you I was a getting a feeling about being followed," he said casually to his brother.

Sam sat up, brushing the splinters of veneer and plywood from his hair. "Yeah, okay, you were right."

Abaddon looked down at the floor. The trap encompassed the entire doorway, painted in blood. Too strong for her to break without a lot of effort. She lifted her gaze and glared at Dean.

"I'm going to pull your flesh from your bones –"

"Yeah, we got the gist the first time," he said dismissively. "You look remarkably intact, all things considered."

He turned to the duffle, pulling out a leather sheath, hand closing around the dark sharkskin hilt and drawing the machete free.

Sam's phone rang. He looked at Dean as he pulled it out.

"Yeah?"

"You seem to be wasting the little time you have," Crowley said. "Perhaps you're not taking this seriously enough."

"It takes time to get places for us humans," Dean said loudly, looking at the phone.

"You'd better get the lead out," Crowley agreed. "Indianapolis. Ivy Motel. Room 116. You have six hours."

The call cut out and Sam grabbed his bag, Dean putting the machete back in the sheath and replacing it in his bag. He paused to look at Abaddon as he tossed the bag through the open window and broken screen to his brother.

"You just sit tight, sweetheart; we'll be back as soon as we can."

Abaddon screamed at him as he climbed through the window, the rumble of the black car's engine rising as it reversed out of the lot and diminishing as it hit the road.

Closing her eyes, she focussed on the structure of the building, ignoring the dampening effect of the blood trap. She could still reach through it. The effort was enormous but she still reach down through the earth under her feet and to the power she needed.

* * *

_**Indianapolis, Indiana**_

Sam looked nervously at the smooth white door, flicking a glance at his watch. Eleven-forty. There was still time. He knocked and it opened and the woman who looked at him didn't look any different from the one he remembered, memories crashing back to him as he realised that this choice had been deliberate.

"Sarah?"

"Sam?" Her brows rose as she looked at him disbelievingly. He watched her surprise dissolve into unease. "What's going on?"

He dropped his gaze. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah, sure," she said, stepping back and aside to let him pass. Closing the door behind him, she turned to watch him stop, his back to her.

"Sam? Just … tell me."

Sam turned around, pushing down the rage and the burning, fighting to find the words that would explain without terrifying.

"I don't know where to start," he said, gesturing hopelessly.

"Whatever it is," she said, walking to him and looking into his face. "I'd rather know it all, than a bunch of half-truths and reassurances. I know what you do."

He knew that, knew that about her. She'd listened to them, to what they'd said and had jumped on board with both feet when she'd realised the danger her father's business brought to people.

_Marry that girl_, Dean'd said. He wished suddenly, vehemently, that that had been a possibility back then.

"Things have gotten a lot more … complicated … since then," he said, looking around and sitting on the edge of the long, white sofa in the living area of the suite. "A lot more complicated."

He wondered for a moment if he would be able to tell her everything, if she was the one person he could confess it all to. As she sat next to him, he caught sight of her hands, folded together in her lap. The diamond in the top ring fractured the light and he realised that chance had gone, a long time ago.

He took a breath and looked back at her face. "There's a demon who's trying to stop us from closing the gates of Hell."

Aside from the fractional widening of her eyes, she didn't change her expression. He let out his breath, and kept going, picking and choosing the parts of the story he told, filling in the background she needed but nothing else.

* * *

"So a demon, named Crowley, is going to kill me in," she said slowly, peering around him at the digital clock on the end table. "Sixteen minutes."

"No," Sam said firmly. "No, he's not."

Sarah looked at him. Under the worn and exhausted-looking face that didn't really bear much resemblance to the young man she'd known, there was the same forthright assuredness she remembered. As if he could stop anything, she thought a little dazedly. Ghosts had been bad enough. Knowing that they were real, that they could kill, that they could appear in the most ordinary of lives and wreak havoc at will. It had scared the daylights out of her, listening to this man and his brother in the small, crappy motel room. But they had clearly not been delusional or hysterical or anything other than completely professional, and that had steadied her.

The rapping on the door broke through the memories and she got up, watching as Sam walked toward it.

_Demons_. Demons, on the other hand, were a lot different to the restless spirits who'd refused to move on. Demons opened up a whole new perspective on the world that she wasn't at all sure she wanted to know about.

Sam opened the door and Dean walked in, carrying several cases. "Sarah," he said, smiling at her. "Long time. What you doing in Indy?"

He put the cases down near the low table. She looked down at him, unable to think of an ordinary answer to the ordinary question with the thoughts of demons and Hell and her death churning through her mind.

"I was … uh … scouting an estate sale for my dad," she said, stumbling over the words.

"Oh." Dean knelt beside the bags, unzipping the first. "Good."

Sam walked to stand beside his brother as Dean dragged cans of spray paint from the bag he was rummaging through.

"Look, we're going to put devil's traps everywhere," he explained to her. "The windows, the door. We've got holy water, the exorcism –" He held up his phone and set it down on the low table. "– ready to play in a loop, and anything that comes through that door –"

Dean passed him a pump action shotgun as he knelt beside the bags, and Sam racked the slide, the noise loud in the room. "Is meat."

He stood up and looked at her. She was watching Dean pull another gun out of the bag, her brow crinkled. "Look," he said, more gently. "I know this is … insane. But insane is what we do. We'll keep you safe."

Sarah licked her lips nervously. She couldn't get her head around what Sam'd told her. Not entirely. But the one thing she did know, through and through, was that she trusted him. Had always trusted him, for some reason she didn't want to know, didn't want to look at.

"Okay."

Dean looked up, half surprised, half amused by her ready acceptance. "Okay? That's it?"

Sarah looked at Sam. "You've done it before."

* * *

_**Avon Lake, Ohio**_

"_NOAN BALTOH SBISI QADAH_"

The pain was not physical and he felt nothing.

He saw.

Betrayed. Beaten. The tip of the sword emerging from the dark skin of Uriel's throat. Abomination. Rebellion. The rooms of Heaven in which no part of him had been left untouched. Betrayer. Liar. Outcast. Confusion and fear and helplessness. Unclean. Kryptonite. Green eyes that had been filled with despair. Blood and pain and disappearing, unbecoming. Back in the world again. No knowledge of why or how. A grey landscape and a flat, pewter light. Despair and shame and sorrow.

Metatron watched the angel standing rigidly in front of him. Probably should have told him about the side-effects, he thought pityingly. But Castiel had wanted atonement. Wanted penance and redemption. And this was the only way now he would ever get them.

An angel doing penance for his sins. It was still a remarkable concept to him. Remarkable on too many levels to examine at once. Two angels knew a little of the mind of their Father, their Creator. Only two. He was one of them. He knew that the seraphim had been created to serve. Obedient weapons. Obedient shepherds. Obedient slaves. Their purpose was not to share in the love of creation, that most powerful force that could … not defeat exactly … but overcome all others. It was merely to serve those who could partake of that force.

He'd wondered, as he'd done his work in the shining towers, how long it would take the archs to realise their ultimate purpose. Had worried slightly about the reaction they would have when they did. Obedience was ingrained, inbred into them, but with Lucifer's rebellion it had been obvious to all that it was not strong enough to overcome will.

The war had fractured the ranks. Michael had known it, even as he'd declared victory, his brother cast down into the cage. Gabriel and Raphael had known it as well. The schism had been opened and all manner of possibilities existed where none had before. Perhaps being forced to remain on the single plane, to have no ability to meddle with others would cure the malaise that jealousy and greed and malice had begun. Perhaps not. He thought, for the most part, that the larger percentage of the angels simply wanted to do what they had always done, content in their obedience, content with the laws that had governed their existence. Like humanity, he thought. Just wanting things to go on predictably, not too painful, not too filled with ideal visions of a future utopia. Unchanging. It was a futile hope. Everything changed and grew, lived and died, learned or perished.

Michael was locked in the cage, with his brother and the half-brother vessel of the Winchesters. He wondered if Dean or Sam had thought of that, when they hurried to try and lock the accursed plane forever. He had the feeling that they might not have. Gabriel was dead. Raphael also. And the factions that had believed each had the right and the ability to rule the kingdom in their place were all children. Nothing more.

Castiel would be purified of his sins. Would face them and accept them and atone for them whether he wanted that or not. Only the truly righteous could close the pearly gates.

* * *

_**Indianapolis, Indiana**_

Dean moved the spray can down in a long sweep across the glass. The wards were Enochian. Cas had showed them the strongest sigils the angels had to keep demons from being able to enter or even see into a place. He shunted the unwelcome thought of the angel aside as he finished it and looked around the room, moving to the next unprotected pane of glass and starting the next.

Sarah sat in the chair by the bed, her fingers twisting the rings on her hand restlessly. She wasn't sure if calling home was a good idea. It would worry Ian to no real purpose, if everything went the way Sam was so certain it would. And it felt … disloyal, somehow, to speak to Ian while Sam was here. She wasn't sure about what that meant.

He'd been the most interesting man she'd ever met, back then, filled with unexpected depths and an idealism that had surprised and intrigued her. The little time they'd had together had haunted her for years afterwards and she'd spent a lot of time unconsciously searching crowds when she was in them, or when she saw them on television, looking for a tall young man with a fall of honey-coloured hair and hazel-green eyes and an expression of painful honesty. She hadn't even realised she was doing it until Ian had asked, one day, who it was she was looking for, catching her in the act.

She looked down at the rings. She'd waited a long time but had finally given up. She wondered if she'd known, for sure, that he would turn up again, if she would've. Pushing the thought aside impatiently, she told herself it didn't matter. She had made her choice and it had been the right choice. The only choice. Life had to be lived, had to be felt and breathed to be of any use. And she had learned that dreaming of the impossible was a waste of the time she had.

"Well, that's new," Sam said quietly, sitting on the bed and looking at the rings.

She looked up at him and followed his gaze. "Yeah … I … his name is Ian. He works Search and Rescue," she said, smiling a little as she heard the words. "Guess I have a type."

Sam swallowed, the small smile flicking over his face and disappearing. Nothing remained the same forever and there was no point in wondering what if.

"Our daughter, Beth, she'll be one in a month," Sarah said, smiling a little as an image of the little girl slipped into her mind. She was more like Ian, she thought sometimes, blonde-haired and blue-eyed and filled with a relentless energy.

Sam watched the expressions on her face change, her features softening, and looked away.

"That's really … great," he got out, turning to look at her. "I mean it … I'm really happy for you."

She smiled gently at him, hearing the thickness in his voice. "Thanks, Sam."

He _was_ really happy for her, happy that she'd found someone, that her life hadn't been blown apart by what she'd seen. Or by his leaving and never looking back. He'd never called. Never looked her up, all the times criss-crossing New York state, he'd never told his brother to stop, go back. He'd believed that she was better off without him and he'd been right.

It hurt like hell.

Dean heard the thickness in Sam's voice as well, turning to watch them. Missed opportunities. Missed … everything, he thought. It was too easy to feel his brother's pain.

"What about you?" Sarah asked.

"Me?" Sam swallowed the laugh that wanted to come out, as bitter as gall and filled with the acid burn of his blood. "Pretty much the same, I guess."

She looked at him and shook her head. "No. You're not. You're not the same."

His brow creased up a little. Had she seen it in him? Seen what he'd done, what'd happened? He felt his pulse accelerate a little at the idea.

"It's been years," she continued, glancing at him, feeling for the words. "I know you left out a lot, Sam, in the story you told me. A hell of a lot."

He looked down, opening his mouth to explain that. She held up her hand. "It's okay, that wasn't – maybe for everyone there are some things that are just better left unsaid. But … I don't know … you seem focussed." She wrinkled up her nose at the inadequacy of the word. "More confident. Like you know what you want."

"You thought I didn't? Back then?" he asked curiously. He'd been – he'd felt – a lot more focussed then. Focussed on revenge. On finding his father and killing the demon and letting nothing get in the way, at least.

"In one way, yes," she said, her mouth curving slightly. "In others, not really."

"Not knowing how to leave, you mean?" he asked, remembering.

"That was a part of it," she admitted. "I was sure you would stay. Took me by surprise."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she said quickly. "I knew you had to, that wasn't it. I just … at the time, I had the strongest feeling that you didn't want to."

"I didn't," Sam said bluntly, looking into her eyes.

Sarah looked away. That was one question answered, after all this time, she thought unhappily.

Sam looked down at the floor. It'd probably the only time he'd really wanted something, something strong enough to make him question what he'd been doing. And he'd taken his brother's path, and let it go, refused to think of it or give it any room in his head or his heart, to keep going on the job. And he'd never let him think of her in the years that had gone by.

"Do you know what you want, Sam?"

He looked back at her, feeling Dean's stared boring into his back, knowing his brother had heard that.

"I know what I have to do," he said carefully. "I know what I need."

"That wasn't really the question," she said, just as carefully.

He smiled at her then, a humourless one-sided grin. "I know, but it's all I've got right now."

She nodded, drawing in a breath and looked back at him, eyes narrowing a little critically. "I do miss the haircut though."

It surprised a real smile from him, and a muffled snort from the window.

The phone rang and Dean turned, picking it up and hitting speaker as Sam and Sarah got up, Sarah pulling the automatic from the waistband at her back and Sam grabbing the shotgun from the bed.

"Crowley?" he growled.

"Five. Four. Trois. Zwei. Uno."

Sarah felt the air rush out of her lungs and her airways thickening. The gun fell to the floor as she reached up to her throat, fingers scrabbling on the smooth skin of her neck as she desperately tried to suck down air through the narrowing channels.

By the side window, Sam heard the clunk and swung around as she fell to the floor, the muscles of her chest twitching and spasming, her hands fluttering on her neck, eyes and mouth wide open.

"Sarah! Hey! Hey, hey, hey," he stuttered helplessly, dropping the shotgun and sliding to her, his hands closing around her shoulders as she stared up at him. "Can you hear me? Sarah!"

"She's dying," Crowley said on speaker. "And there's nothing you can do about it."

"Sonofabitch!"

"Watch your blood pressure, Dean," Crowley said, the smile audible in his voice. "Nothing down here but witches, witches, witches, from one end of Hell to the other."

"It's a spell!" Sam shouted at Dean. "Find the hex bag!"

He lurched to his feet, hands moving over the contents of the desk frantically, ears straining to hear the strangled sounds from Sarah behind him.

Dean moved to the sofa, flinging cushions off as he searched feverishly for the small bag that had to be there, somewhere.

"I thought of sending in a few of my bruisers, letting them go to town …" Crowley said, listening to the sounds transmitted across the airwaves. "But then … well, Trial One was killing a hellhound. Trial Two was rescue a soul from the Pit, so from here on I'm going to keep everything Hell-related away from you boys."

Sam couldn't hear the demon's voice over the pounding of the blood in his ears. He finished with the desk and strode to the bed, throwing off the covers, tipping up the mattress, the same thought repeating over and over again in his head.

"And it seemed fitting," Crowley continued expansively. "From what I understand, Sammy took that bird's breath away."

Sarah felt her vision going, not enough oxygen in her bloodstream, not enough getting into her lungs. Each indrawn struggle was agony, knives against the lining of her throat and nasal passages as they narrowed tighter and tighter, her diaphragm felt depressed as if the muscles had simply ceased to function. She looked up and blackness crowded out the white and blue room, gathering closer and closer around her. Dying. The thought flew across her mind and panic rose.

Sam yanked out the nightstand drawers, turning them over, looking in the cavity behind them. _Where the FUCK was it?_ It had to be here, had to be here, she was dying.

On the other side of the room, Dean could hear Crowley going on and on, but he wasn't taking in what the demon was saying, hands flying over the contents of the closet, squeezing and shoving aside the clothing, feeling through the lining and pockets of the luggage on the floor, probing and prising against the skirting boards and lining of the space, looking for a looseness, a weakness, a hiding place.

Sam turned as he heard the thumping, Sarah's hands beating furiously to either side of her on the floor as her body struggled to get air, convulsing in its need to survive, her face pale and her lips blue. He ran to her, dropping to his knees.

"Sarah! Sarah, listen to me, you're going to be alright –"

"Not going to be alright, Moose," Crowley said comfortably. "None of them will be alright."

Sarah's hands stopped moving, and silence filled the room. Sam stared down into her eyes, still open but no longer seeing him, no longer seeing anything.

"And what will you have left," Crowley continued softly. "When they're all gone?"

"No, no, please no," Sam muttered, his hands slipping to the sides of her face. "Sarah, please!"

"You want to keep those people alive and I want complete and utter surrender," Crowley's voice filled the room as Dean picked up the phone. "The tablet. The trials. You'll give them up. Or we'll keep doing this dance. Your choice."

Sam pressed his ear against her chest. There wasn't a sound. Thrusting himself backward, he hit the side of the bed, unable to feel his body, staring at her. _Accept it_, he told himself furiously. _Accept it_.

Dean looked at the woman lying in front of his brother, his fingers flexing around the phone in his hand. The throw was involuntarily, full force into the wall, with every bit of weight and power he could summon. The phone burst into pieces as it bounced from the wall to the floor and he saw the bag then, lying between the screen and the circuitry board.

_Too big_, a part of his mind thought confusedly. _Too big to fit into that slim case_. But it was witchcraft and there were no rules that applied to the physical universe if the spell – and the spell-maker – was strong enough.

Sam stared at the small leather bag. They'd brought it with them, right to her. He hadn't dropped his phone in the car, he realised slowly. It had been taken and left there, with its deadly addition, waiting for them. Crowley had taken time and effort with this. _How_ had he known about Glendale? _How_ had he'd known about Sarah? _How_ had he known that he'd never forgotten her, never let her go, had kept the faintest sliver of hope alive in his heart that one day he would see her again? _How?_

"_HOW!?_" he screamed at the room.

* * *

_**I-70 W**_

"How long till we get back?" Sam asked, leaning against the glass of the window.

"Another ten hours or so," Dean answered. They'd been going for the past thirty hours non-stop. Exhaustion lay at the edge of his consciousness, waiting for him to relax, to give it an opening. He wasn't going to. Not until they got back home, at least.

"I need your phone."

Dean reached into his jacket, pulling it out and handing it to him. "Who're you calling?"

"Charlie," Sam said, searching through the numbers.

"And why?"

"She's smart," Sam mumbled vaguely. "Maybe she can think of something I can't." The phone rang in his ear and he heard the pick up. "Charlie? It's Sam."

"Sam – what's wrong?"

"Crowley – I need – uh – I need your help," he said disjointedly. "Need to you to search for any information on us, over the last ten years, that might be available on the internet – or anywhere else you can think of."

There was a moment of silence on the end of the line and he pulled the phone away from his ear to look at it suspiciously. "Charlie?"

"Well, you know, the best source is the books, Sam," she said. "They're online, they're searchable. They cover everything except the last three years?"

He closed his eyes. Of course it was the fucking books. Of course. What'd Dean said? _Everything is in here. I mean everything. From the racist truck to – to me having sex. I'm full-frontal in here, dude._

"The books," he said aloud.

"Yeah, that's the primo source," Charlie said. "Do you want me to check for anything else?"

"No," Sam said. "Listen, you got the hex bags, all the protection, right?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Stay put for awhile," he told her. "Don't be anywhere where you're not protected and don't let anyone into your digs – at all, you understand?"

"Yeah, but –"

"No buts, Charlie, I'll explain in a while, okay?"

"Okay."

He cut the call and handed the phone back to his brother.

"They're online and they've got everything," Dean said, taking it from him and tucking it back into his pocket. "She going to stay put?"

"She said she would."

"How's he finding the people that have moved or changed their names or …"

"Most private dicks could do that, Sam," Dean said quietly. "They're not trying to hide. Just live normal lives."

Sam nodded, turning back to the window. There were hundreds of them. They were all vulnerable. And their families. And Crowley was keeping the demons locked up and away from them.

"She had a daughter," he said, a moment later.

Dean felt his chest constrict. "I know, I heard her."

"She had a life with someone she loved and a little girl, a family," Sam continued, as if he hadn't heard.

"Sammy –"

"I didn't love Amelia."

Dean turned and looked at him.

"I told myself I did, but I didn't. Not like Jess. Not even the promise of it," Sam said, his eyes closed. "And I didn't let myself recognise that until I saw Sarah and she told me about her family."

Dean watched the taillights in front of him. He'd felt the regret in that room, coming off his brother in waves of misery. Realistically, knowing what they knew, Sarah would have been killed years ago if Sam had tried to stay, his path laid down clearly and no angel or demon would've let a girl get in the way of it. There just wasn't any time that Sam could've been safe and chosen a different life, a different road.

He couldn't do this alone. And he could feel Sam's determination slipping away, under the load of his grief, of his pain. There would be a way, there always was, they just had to find it.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Sam walked across the war room, hearing the heavy clunks of his brother's boots on the stairs behind him.

"You okay?" Dean asked cautiously.

"What do you think?" Sam turned around, his face bleak and hard.

"Look, I know it's bad right now, okay? But we stick to the plan," Dean told him, feeling a flutter of anxiety as he saw the desolation in Sam's eyes. "We shut down Hell."

"How? Exactly?" Sam asked.

"We get a demon –"

"You heard Crowley! He's not going to let a demon anywhere near us," Sam said, his voice raw and filled with frustration. "And without a demon, all we can do is sit back and watch people we know – people we _saved_ – die."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying …" Sam's shoulders slumped as his voice quietened. "I'm saying, maybe this isn't one we can win." He looked at Dean. "Maybe we should just take the deal."

"We'll figure this out, Sam, we will," Dean said, the muscle at the point of his jaw jumping as he tried to ignore the uneasiness that was rising in the face of his brother's hopelessness. "We have to, Sam. You're dying."

"I don't care."

"I CARE!" Dean roared at him, his face screwing up in anger. "I care enough for both of us!"

"Dean –" Sam flinched back at the rage in the dark eyes watching him.

"No!" Dean stared at him. "We'll figure this out and we'll kick it in the ass – like we always do!"

Sam's gaze dropped, moving restlessly around the library. He didn't feel that – that whatever it was that kept his brother going, through fire and pain and Hell and everything.

"Are you with me?" Dean demanded, his eyes locked on Sam's.

Lifting his eyes to Dean's, Sam wondered where that determination had come from. Their father? Their mother? It wasn't something that seemed to exist for him. He couldn't keep putting one foot in front of the other, no matter what was going on around him. He'd once thought of Dean as being broken. Being weak. He couldn't imagine now how he'd ever thought that. His brother had never run from a fight. Never tried to hide or back down or give up. He'd done all of those things.

He was dying, he thought tiredly. Dying of trying to be something he couldn't? Dying of wanting to be free of the curse that had dogged him his whole life? He didn't know … not really … not now … if he was strong enough to do this.

The thought brought an ocean surge of misery, filling him.


	46. Chapter 46 Let's Make A Deal

**Chapter 46 Let's Make A Deal**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

The fire in the hearth of the library was dying away and Dean looked at it, getting up slowly and going to the metal basket beside it to throw on a few more logs. He hadn't split so much wood since he and Sam had spent time at Bobby's, back when they were kids, but it'd been soothing work, simple and physical and satisfying as the splitter slammed into the grain and the logs had fallen into pieces. Better than going out looking for a fight, he'd realised later when he'd finished filling the shed and had felt the good ache of heavy exercise right through his body. Every log had been Crowley's head.

He was aware that he was straining to hear something from the second floor, a futile and unnecessarily tiring exercise given the sound-proofing of the building in general. Sam had turned away and gone to his room twenty hours ago, and he hadn't heard anything since.

If anything could've taken his brother's will, it was Sarah, he thought now, watching the coals jump as the second log landed on the first and bright yellow flames began to lick around the edges. It'd been too soon, he knew, but at the same time it'd been exactly what Sam had needed to at least partially bury Jessica's memory, to begin to live again instead of wanting to die. The anger – that raging anger that sometimes seemed to consume Sam – had been sublimated in the short-lived relationship, her pragmatism and understanding of Sam's loss somehow getting through where he'd failed.

At the time, there hadn't really been a choice. They'd both thought that. And looking back, looking for loopholes and possibilities, there hadn't been a choice either. But he wished there could've been, because seeing Sam's regret, seeing the anguish when he'd finally accepted that she was gone, that had been pretty damned close to the limits of what he could take.

He pushed at the logs and straightened up, heading for the sideboard and pouring a couple of inches of whiskey into a glass. A thump on the stairs at the end of the hall dragged his attention around to the door.

"You know, I was thinking –" he said, as Sam walked unsteadily into the room.

"I think you're right," Sam said, his words running over the top.

"I was? About what?"

"About not giving up," Sam said, shaking his head at the tacit offer of whiskey and dropping into a chair at the table. "I got an idea."

"Yeah? Me too," Dean said, sitting opposite him. "I've called everyone I could find, but it's not going to make a difference, they can't run from Crowley."

"No, did you get hold of Garth?"

"No."

"I think Crowley's working on the people who helped us first," Sam said, his brow furrowing as he thought through that list of people.

"They're already mostly dead," Dean said uncertainly.

"Not hunters, but – like Sarah, she wasn't a target of the ghost until she started helping," Sam said. "And Mike –"

"Mike?" Dean interrupted. "As in the kid, Mike?"

Sam glanced up at him guiltily. He hadn't meant to mention that name.

"He got hit?"

"The family did," Sam admitted reluctantly. "Some kind of disease, they died in hospital."

"Goddamn sonofabitch!"

"Yeah."

"Alright, what are we doing about it," Dean turned back to his brother, eyes dark and face stony.

"We'll call Crowley, tell him to call it off, tell him we'll make a deal," Sam told him. "And –" he added quickly, seeing his brother's mouth open to argue. "We'll trap him when we meet to sign the contract, and 'cure' him."

"Sam …" Dean turned around and sat down again. "Do we have everything we need? Where the hell are we getting purified blood?"

Sam held up his right arm. "From me."

"It's still burning, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but it's getting less painful now," Sam said, dropping his arm back to the table. "I think the demon blood is almost gone."

"Almost isn't pure."

"I think there's something I need to do before it is."

"What?"

"We have everything else, Dean," Sam ignored the question. "We have the exorcism, we can find consecrated ground."

"And how the hell are we going to trap Crowley?" Dean looked at him. "He walked right through the sigils and protection around the boat, took Kevin without even noticing them. Those were Enochian, most of them; they were the strongest ones we knew."

"Were." Sam gestured vaguely at the hall. "I went through the oldest texts, last night – tonight –" He frowned and shook his head. "I found this."

He pushed the bundled and sealed packet of skins over toward his brother. "They pre-date the Key of Solomon by a thousand years, and they're specific."

"And you think I can read them?" Dean looked down at the pack. "How'd you read them?"

"I photographed them and sent them to the language department in Istanbul," Sam said, shrugging. "Promised them I'd send them the originals if they could do the translations."

"Istanbul?"

"They have the right researchers there," Sam said, waving his hand impatiently. "Those are binding spells for the archdemons, Dean – Abaddon and the others like her – the first-fallen."

"But Crowley –"

"Crowley's King of Hell, but he's still just a human soul twisted into a demon," Sam said, pointing at the packet. "Those sigils were designed to bind Lucifer. The text said something about the Cage – not the locks or seals, but the actual structure." He looked at his brother. "They'll hold Crowley, there's no question."

Dean reached out and opened the pack, easing back the flap and gently drawing the brittle skins free of the wrapping. Each sheet held a number of designs, the penmanship fine and the ink a dark rusty brown in colour. He was reasonably sure it wasn't actually ink.

"I found some things in that torture room," he said distractedly to Sam. "As well as the shackles they used in the room, they had a few portable sets."

"Good," Sam said. "We'll let him choose the meeting place, and get comfortable, and then we'll be able to grab him."

Dean thought of the power the demon had shown over the last year. "He's been getting stronger, you know."

"Yeah, but I don't think he's gotten to Lucifer's level yet," Sam said, running a hand through his hair. "But he'll be looking for a trap and I'm not sure we can just act cowed enough to convince him."

"I was thinking about that too," Dean said, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.

* * *

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota**_

_Why do you put yourself through this?_ The thought was a familiar one, brought up every single time she sat alone in a restaurant, sipping a by-the-glass red and feeling her stockings developing a run just because she thought of it.

The answer was also familiar, if less well-articulated. Sex with something that didn't require batteries. Loneliness. Comfort. Conversation. Sex. Cuddles. Laughing out loud with someone occasionally. The ever-present and not pleasant thought of acquiring a cat or five. Sex. She missed sex. Missed the warmth and thrill and the vague power she felt in herself.

So … America's most popular online dating site and here she was.

"On the house, Sheriff," Nancy Yeats appeared beside her, setting a Manhattan onto the table with a smile.

"Oh, thanks, Nance," Jodie said, looking up at the waitress quickly. "But I didn't order –"

"So …" the male voice was behind Nancy and the blonde raised her brows and turned away as Jodie caught sight of him.

Dark … everything, she thought. Hair, eyes, clothes … a crimson tie enlivened the darkness startlingly.

"What are we drinking?" he finished, sliding into the booth opposite her.

"Roderick?" she asked uncertainly. The accent was English, she thought, not the plum-in-the-mouth BBC or upper class, but something more raw, tempered by the rough, deep timbre of the voice.

"Jodie," he said, smiling a little as if that were a surprise. "Words cannot begin to describe the injustice that that picture does to you."

She looked at him for a long moment, replaying what he'd said in her mind. She hadn't had a date like this since … well, hell, never, actually. Picking up the glass he'd sent, a concoction that was an unlikely shade of pink, she felt the warmth of the same colour rising up her neck.

"Come on."

He'd always been good at this part, Crowley thought, without a trace of modesty. Seeing what they needed, giving it to them, it was … a gift, one he'd never have discovered if he'd lived out his life trying to eke out a miserable living as a small-time tailor in a succession of small, dung-filled, peasant-infested towns.

The woman sitting opposite him had helped the Winchesters and from time to time, Bobby Singer. It was like a bouquet of revenge, wrapped prettily in a straightforward, small-town woman with a trusting heart and a need for company. _Too easy altogether_.

* * *

He led her skilfully through topics of conversations that he knew would fascinate her, always deferring to her opinions, throwing in small nuggets of priceless information about himself – well about the publisher his body had used to belong to, anyway – through the meandering, gentle discourse, and he watched her interest grow as her initial wariness retreated.

His memories of life, real, human life were gone, but he imagined that he'd never liked people. He'd always loved manipulation though, the art and craft of it, drawing people into a set of lies that were unverifiable and therefore undeniable. It was a game he'd played in life, this life at least, rising through the ranks through it, even manipulating the more ancient demons down in the flames and screams.

"What?" he asked gently, seeing the wariness returning.

"Look at you," she said to him. "Your fancy career, the suit …" she shrugged, chin dropping into her palm as she looked at him. "I'm pretty much what I am. Small-town girl."

The predictability of it would've been boring if the end game wasn't going to be so satisfying. Predictable as well. But satisfying. But for now, he pushed those thoughts aside and looked at her, knowing that it would only take one thing to get her to forget those doubts.

"We do share something, you and I," he said quietly.

"What?"

"Loss."

For a moment, Jodie thought she'd misheard. Thought he'd said something else, perhaps. But the moment passed and the word sank in and she dropped her gaze, her enjoyment and her caution and her sensibilities forgotten.

"I've lost someone too," he said, reaching out for her hand.

"How did you know?"

"I don't know," he said, his fingers curving around hers. "I've learned to see the shadows in the eyes, I suppose. The people who used to be there and aren't now. That's what it feels like to me."

It wasn't the understanding in his voice or the sympathy in his face or even the resonance of what he'd said, echoing in the vast emptiness inside of her. It was the care, she thought, feeling her throat close and her eyes fill. She'd gotten so used to brushing it off, pretending not to feel, pretending that she was too tough to feel … it broke through the walls as if they hadn't been there at all. She laughed uncomfortably, withdrawing a hand and running the edge of her finger below her eyes, hoping she wasn't smearing her carefully-applied eyeliner further.

"It's not a date till I've cried," she told him lightly, her gaze cutting away.

"So, now you've cried," he answered, his tone equally light, the invitation underlying made more potent by that.

She looked back at him, hearing it but not sure it was what he meant.

Crowley smiled, one side of his mouth lifting crookedly higher than the other, a disarming smile.

"The night's young?"

Jodie put her hand over his and looked down at their hands. She had a choice, of course. She could go wherever he led and count it as living. Or she could go back to the small house, with its empty rooms and deep silence and tell herself that she'd do better next time. If there was a next time.

She drew in a deep breath and withdrew her hands, pushing back her chair and picking up her bag. "I need a few moments in the powder room, is that okay?"

"Of course," Crowley smiled at her. "I don't have a schedule; I'm completely at your service."

Her smile wavered a little as he rose as she did, and her heart fluttered in consternation. But he returned to his seat as she turned away and she realised with a slight shock that it was only manners she wasn't used to, it'd been quite a while since a man had risen from a table when she had.

Pushing open the bathroom door, she glanced around, wiping under eyes again as a few more tears spilled out, not sure if she was reacting to what he'd said, what'd he done or just the whole evening of pleasant company wrapped in the promise of something more.

"This is crazy," she muttered to herself as she walked to the mirror above the sinks. "This is crazy."

She set her bag on the counter next to her and rummaged through it. "I'm crazy!"

She found her lipstick, reapplying it carelessly as she stared at herself in the mirror. "He's attractive though, right?"

* * *

At the table, Crowley pulled a supple skin sheet from his coat pocket and smoothed it out on the table. The bright red design was flamboyant against the pale hide and the dark wood of the table beneath. In the centre, a bone gleamed dully in the candlelight. He placed a small photograph of Sheriff Jodie Mills against the candle-holder at the edge of the skin. Over her face, another symbol had been drawn in red.

"_Manu mortis a jus o_," he intoned softly over the shrine. "_Spiritus vitae a re sua adit_."

* * *

In the bathroom, Jodie's fingers curled around an unfamiliar small leather pouch in her bag. She lifted it out and stared at it, and her fingers clenched around it as a thousand knives sliced into her at once.

_Not happening_, she thought frantically, her hand welded to the leather, blood rising in her throat as she leaned over the sink and let it spill out, bright red against the smooth, white porcelain. _Not happening. No. Not to me_.

The pain increased and she couldn't scream, couldn't get her breath, couldn't do anything but feel the gnawing, ravaging teeth ripping through her organs, every muscle locked in shock and overload.

* * *

The phone rang and Crowley picked it up, smiling a little. "You have less than one minute before a very dear, attractive, slightly tipsy friend of yours snuffs it."

"Call it off, Crowley!" Dean's voice blasted from the speaker.

"Because?"

"Because it's over, you son of a bitch!" Crowley smiled at the bitterness in the eldest Winchester's tone. "We want a deal."

"Thirty seconds," Crowley reminded him, half-closing his eyes as he saw the tall brunette fall to the tiled floor in the bathroom, the contents of her purse scattering in every direction.

"We stop the trials, you stop the killing," Dean snapped.

"I want the demon tablet," Crowley reminded him. "The whole demon tablet."

"Fine," Dean agreed readily. "But then the angel tablet comes to us."

Crowley looked at the phone incredulously. "On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that we have the prophet and it's of no fucking use to you whatsoever!" Dean growled at the phone. "Deal or not?"

Crowley looked at the candle sitting in front of him. He reached out, fingers on either side of the flame. A deal was a deal, but Dean would pay for this one.

"First, I need to hear two little words," he said slowly. "I. Surrender."

The silence on the other end of the line was more telling than he'd hoped for. He could almost see Dean's expression flatten out to the serial-killer stare he used when he was so angry he could no longer speak.

"Tick-tock," Crowley said, unable to keep the note of delight from his voice.

"I surrender!" Sam's voice leapt out of the speaker.

Crowley laughed. "Oh, sorry, Moose, this one is actually on your brother. Come on, Dean, I know you can do it for poor Sheriff Mills."

"I."

"Didn't quite catch that, I'm sorry."

"I!" Dean's voice thundered out of the phone. The next word was so soft Crowley had to press the phone tightly against his ear to hear it. It was enough. He could put them both through some more hoops when they signed the contract. He closed his fingers around the flame and the candle was extinguished.

* * *

Jodie flung the leather pouch from her hand as it burst into blue flame. The pain had gone. Not diminished. Not eased. Just gone. She wiped her hand over her mouth, and looked at her fingers. No blood. Not even a trace.

Rolling to her knees, she hurriedly shoved the contents of her purse back inside it and reached up for the edge of the sink. The porcelain bowl was a gleaming white and utterly unstained.

No coincidences in this life, Bobby had told her once. And luck always ran out. It hadn't this time, she thought unsteadily. Didn't mean it wouldn't in the future. She pushed open the bathroom door and walked straight to the lobby of the restaurant, not even seeing Nancy's questioning face as she pushed through the heavy glass door to the street, dragging in deep breaths and feeling her throat widen to take them in, her tongue questing around the inside of her mouth in search of any trace of the coppery taste of her blood.

There was none. She half-ran down the block to her car. At home, she had Sam's number. She needed to know what protection she needed to keep herself safe from this ever happening again.

As she slid into the driver's seat and slotted the key in the ignition, she wondered how many cats it would take to keep her warm on winter nights.

* * *

_**Outskirts of Warsaw, Missouri**_

Dean looked along the long dam as he drove north, following Kevin's hastily given instructions.

"What are we looking for?"

"Billboard, about a mile from the turnoff," Sam said, rubbing his eyes. "There's the car."

Pulling off the behind the silver sedan, Dean looked around. It wasn't all that far from Garth's boat, just far enough to be out of most people's immediate vicinity search patterns. Kid had some sense, anyway.

They got out and crossed the road, climbing the small bank to the billboard. Dean looked at it. Dave and Paul's Chili Pot Restaurant. A lurid and lopsided devil grinned at him from the centre. Underneath the sign, Kevin pulled out a half-rotted hessian and canvas bag, digging one hand into its folds.

"Buried the demon tablet underneath the devil?" he asked Kevin. "Seriously?"

"What? I was delirious," Kevin muttered, pulling out both pieces. He brought them together and the stone sealed itself, the writing lighting up with gold as the edges fused.

"Sure this is going to work?" he asked Sam as he handed the tablet to him.

"What other choice do we have?" Sam shrugged, slipping the tablet into the wide pocket in the inside of his coat.

Dean pulled out the key to the order's safe hold. Kevin had told them Metatron had taken off for a few days now, and there was no way he was letting Kevin get lost in the world again.

"This is a secret lair, you understand me?" he told the boy seriously, handing him the key. "No keggers."

"I don't have any friends," Kevin said prosaically. "Neither do you."

"Yeah," Dean ignored the comment. "Well, just lay low. Who knows, maybe you'll be a Mathlete again before you know it."

Sam flicked a glance at him and he ignored that too, watching Kevin stash the key. It wasn't the exact truth, but so long as Hell was shut up tight, he thought that Kevin would be a lot safer and a lot more likely to get some kind of life in the end. Turning away, he followed Sam to the edge of the bank.

"Hey guys?" Kevin called. "You're doing the right thing."

Sam looked back at him and nodded. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. He'd already said it. There wasn't a whole range of options left.

* * *

_**I-29 N, Iowa**_

"This sucks," Dean said, apropos of nothing.

Sam glanced at him. "Yeah."

"What'd Jodie say?"

"Said she was fine, wanted to know how she could protect herself."

"You sent the protection bags?"

"Yeah, told her put them in the walls of her house, in her clothes, in her car."

"Will that work?" Dean slid a curious sideways look at his brother.

"Maybe."

They'd gone over everything they could go over, and he thought that the plan would work. It hinged on Sam's blood and he wasn't sure about Sam's confidence that would do the job. But Sam wasn't talking about that right now, his face closing up stonily the three times Dean had mentioned it.

"Why Bobby's?" he asked aggrievedly.

"Crowley's twisted sense of humour?" Sam suggested. He didn't care. The pain had diminished in some ways. Less blood to burn, he thought sourly. Where it still existed in him, it was far deeper, returning memories and feelings he'd thought were buried, concreted over, that he wouldn't have to look at again.

He'd spent the past two days and nights reliving those memories and he was exhausted, mentally and physically. Some had been old, so old he thought he couldn't've been more than four or five years when the events had occurred. Others were more recent and so vivid and intense that he'd gone down to the lowest levels of the safe hold, as far from Dean as he could find, spending half the night crunched into a corner, his fist jammed against his mouth to stop himself from making any sound.

In his mind, he heard the warm rounded tones of Ralph Edward's voice – _Sam Winchester, this is your life!_

"I still think we should kill the sonofabitch," Dean said, staring through the windshield and jerking Sam's attention back to the car.

"This'll be worse," Sam said, straightening a little in the seat. "This'll last forever."

"The guy was a dick in life, Sammy. He went downstairs for a reason," Dean argued, the same argument he'd fielded a dozen times so far. "Why exactly do we give him a second shot?"

"He made a deal, Dean," Sam countered, as he had the last dozen times his brother had made the same point. "Not a smart one, but it wasn't like he axe-murdered his family."

Scowling at the road, Dean gave it up unwillingly. Kevin had been certain Crowley had killed his mother. For that alone, there shouldn't have been anything other than death waiting for the demon. Not a second chance. Not … redemption.

He flicked a look at the sign they passed. Sixty miles to Sioux Falls. He felt his stomach do a slow roll at the thought of seeing the yard again, the charred and broken remains of the house. Crowley liked to inflict whatever collateral damage he could, he knew. The choice of the meeting place had just reflected the demon's knowledge that it would hurt to see it again.

* * *

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota**_

Dean pulled slowly into the drive, the Impala idling down the row of junkers. He stopped past the sheds, and they got out, looking around, every single direction filled with memory.

Grass and weeds grew up between, around and through the rusted chassis, the broken windows and twisted frames, dust skirled along the alley between the piles of neglected and forgotten vehicles as the breeze slid through their bones.

The house was skeletal as well, what remained of the frame crumbling little by little under the pressure of the weather and the vegetation fighting to reclaim the ground. Half had fallen into the basement; the other half teetered on the brink, drunkenly leaning inward.

Dean stopped beside the Nova and felt his throat close up. Rust had made it through the various coats of primer that Bobby had kept applying, always meaning to get it into the paint shed for a good top coat but never quite making it there. The driver's window was smashed, the seat inside littered with fragments of glass and weeds grew enthusiastically around and up through the engine bay and over the rear end, thickly entwined and waving new tendrils in the air.

_Their whole lives looked like this_, he thought, a deep rill of bitterness bringing the taste of gall to the back of his throat.

"Hello, boys."

He turned around, hearing the grating of Sam's boots on the road behind him. Crowley stood in the middle of the alley, smiling at them.

"What's the old expression?" the demon mused happily. "Success has many fathers … failure is a …Winchester?"

Walking slowly toward the King of Hell, Dean struggled to remember that once the cuffs were on, he still couldn't kill the smarmy asshole.

"Where's the stone?"

"That was my question," Dean replied, glad to hear his voice was even.

"The stone," Crowley repeated. Sam moved forward, pulling the edge of his jacket aside as he reached into the inside pocket.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Crowley said, taking a half-step back involuntarily. "Slowly."

_Sam'd been right_, Dean thought, watching the demon. Crowley was expecting a trap.

"There she is," Crowley said as Sam pulled the tablet out slowly. He dragged the side of his overcoat aside, showing the top edge of the angel tablet in the inside pocket.

"And the contract?" Dean asked.

Crowley drew the scroll from his coat and flipped it, three yards of tightly written paper unrolling to their feet. Dean and Sam looked down at it incredulously.

"Yeah, I'm sure there's no hidden agenda in there," Dean said sardonically.

"The highlights? We swap tablets," Crowley said casually. "You stand down from the trials – forever."

"You stop killing everyone we've ever saved," Sam said, staring at him.

"Agreed."

Glancing at his brother, Dean reached for the pen in his jacket, looking down at the scroll. He pulled it out and uncapped it.

"Ah-ah-ah," Crowley said, dragging the contract away. "Nice try, Squirrel." He looked at Sam. "Moose is doing these trials. Moose signs."

"No, no," Dean said, shaking his head. "He's not signing anything until I read the fine print."

"I can read it," Sam snapped, grabbing the pen from his hand.

Crowley's brows rose slightly at the irritation in his voice.

"Hey, you wanted me here – I'm here," Dean said to his brother, his voice low and tight. "But I'll be damned if I'm going to let him screw us even more!"

"This is my job, Dean!" Sam said, scowling. "You agreed to trust me!"

"I didn't agree to you –"

"What's this?" Crowley interrupted, looking from one to the other speculatively. "A rift? Between family?"

They looked at him, expressions smoothing out instantly. Dean muttered something under his breath as he bent to pick up the end of the scroll.

"Didn't quite catch that, Dean?"

The brothers ignored him and Crowley smiled inwardly. It was an unexpected bonus, being able to split them, he thought with a delighted satisfaction. Working together they could be formidable, even when the odds were against them. But apart … apart they were much easier to manipulate into doubt and uncertainty. He felt himself relax slightly.

* * *

_**Houston, Texas**_

Castiel sat on the bench of the bus shelter and stared at a man across the street. He was carrying a sign, written on a ripped-off section of cardboard. _May GOD bless U. Donations welcome_. The man was unkempt, his clothing dirty and tattered as he held up the sign toward the oncoming traffic, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. _Lice_, the angel thought absently.

It did raise the question though. About his Father.

"What was He like?" he asked Metatron, who sat beside him reading yet another book.

"Who?" The scribe turned and looked at him, glancing skyward for a moment. "God?"

Castiel's need flickered in his eyes for a moment, and Metatron sighed. "We call Him He … for lack of a more accurate pronoun, I suppose. He is not a He. Not … an entity, not the way we can perceive. A supernova is God. The spinning of the galaxies – those are God. He – even his most contracted and communicable persona – is not – like anything else." He flicked a glance at the angel beside him. "As we are not really material, but beings of a different nature, neither is He a being at all."

"He spoke to you," Cas said uncertainly.

Metatron nodded. "And to Michael and to Joshua, and to Lucifer," he agreed. "I would call Him a force, really. Of Creation. Of something that we know too little about. He manifested from time to time, drew energy together, formed a construct of mind and frame and thought," the angel smiled a little at the memory. "I don't know that I could've taken it all down otherwise."

"In that form, He was like a Father," he continued slowly. "Careful to explain. Careful to ensure that I understood. He even had a sense of humour. But when I was finished, He disappeared and it was like –" Metatron fell silent and Castiel looked at him curiously.

"Like what?"

"Like having the reason for your existence vanish," the scribe said, an edge of bitterness along his words. He shook his head and looked back at Castiel. "In any case, He'd left His instructions and we followed them."

"Did He … care about his creations, Metatron?"

"I don't know," Metatron said, his voice riddled with a thin thread of doubt. He belatedly realised what the angel was asking. "The nephilim was a monster, Castiel."

Cas remembered the grace and beauty of the woman he'd slain and pushed the memory away. His doubts were perhaps understandable, but they served no purpose to him now. He'd done it. It was over. "And the next trial?"

"Across the street," Metatron said, turning to look at the bar and the man who was sweeping the steps in front of it. "His name is Dwight Charles. He is the next on the Cupid list."

Cas looked from the man to the angel. "On their list?"

"A Cupid is scheduled to bring this man love," Metraton expanded, looking down at his watch. "Sometime in the next twenty-four hours."

"I don't understand."

"The second trial is retrieving Cupid's bow," the scribe said, watching Dwight Charles walk down the steps and begin to sweep the leaf fall from the street outside the bar.

Cas felt a brief surge of hope. "No killing?"

"No killing," Metatron confirmed.

* * *

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota**_

The contract was in the densest legalese Crowley had been able to manage and Dean moved slowly along it, reading his way toward the demon, re-reading the paragraphs that seemed to say one thing, while actually saying something else. Tucked away, his annoyance grew proportionally to the numbers of hitertos, hereins, notwithstandings and thereuntos.

"You're gonna move your lips the whole way up here, aren't you?" Crowley asked as Dean approached at a snail's pace.

The eldest Winchester glared at him for a moment then returned his gaze back to the paragraph he'd been deconstructing. _In the case of the party of the third part, undersigned as the co-signee of the above paragraphs Fourteen (14) through Twenty-Four (24), it is deemed acceptable if not to the contrary of the expectations of the party of the first part hereby declaring all and every item in this contract to be of absolute accuracy and therefore, and hereunto, not applicable to the usual rigours of discovery nor of the investigations that have not, in fact, been authorised, allocated and assigned by the party of the second part, who in this case shall be seen to be the final adjudicator in the matter of the paragraphs Eighteen (18) through Thirty-Six (36) in terms of …_

"You know why I always defeat you?" Crowley asked him casually.

Dean's gaze flickered upward. "Because you drown us in the sort of writing usually reserved for bad television series?"

Crowley smiled. "It's your humanity, Dean. It's a built-in handicap. You always put emotion ahead of good, old-fashioned, common-sense."

Dean's gaze shifted from the paper in his hands to the demon, eyes narrowed slightly.

"Let's have the big galoot sign it now, shall we?" Crowley smiled at him.

Dean turned and looked at Sam, who walked toward them, the pen in his hand. Dean let go of the contract with his right hand, feeling the weight in his sleeve, aware that Crowley's attention was completely on his brother and the pen he was carrying. _Must've seemed like nothing could go wrong_, he thought absently as he flicked his hand out, catching the loose cuff and snapping it around the demon's wrist, the chains and the loud click of the cuff's locking mechanism breaking the silence in the yard.

Crowley lifted his hand, looking at the shackle around his arm. The other cuff was locked around Dean's wrist.

"Is this a joke?" Crowley looked up at the man in front of him, feeling a faint tremor of unease at the cold satisfaction in Dean's face. "You realise that all I have to do is–" He snapped his fingers.

Nothing happened.

"Ah-ah-ah," Dean smiled humourlessly. "Demonic handcuffs. With the giant, economy-sized, price-saver binding hoodoo this time. No clicking, no teleporting, no smoking out. Oh, and … no deal."

Crowley looked down at them. The engraving was something he hadn't seen. But it short-circuited his connection to Hell and the power held there completely. He looked more closely at one of the symbols on the edge of the sigil.

"These were to hold Lucifer?"

"Yahtzee," Sam said. "We figured you probably weren't quite as strong as the devil."

Dean stared down at him. "And that pretty much means … you're our bitch."

Crowley felt the stab of fury at the smugness clearly visible in the man's eyes. "Fine! You wanna play chain-gang? Let's!"

He swung a fist, knuckles cracking as they connected with the side of Dean's face, the sudden and unexpected pain sublimated in seeing the gleeful smirk wiped from the man's face as he stumbled backwards.

"You shackled yourself to the wrong bull, mate!"

Dean straightened and turned, and Crowley has less than a second to glimpse the expression in his eyes before the blow hit him, mashing lips and nose against the bones. He was actually seeing stars, he thought dazedly, feeling Dean open his jacket, the abrupt removal of the weight of the tablet and the hands tightening on the lapels of his coat, dragging his attention back.

"I could do this all day," Dean told him. The same expression was still in his eyes and Crowley recognised it belatedly. Relief. "'Cause you know what? Damn, it feels good! But sooner or later, you're gonna have to face it – you're ours."

Crowley stared at him and the trickle of unease increased steadily.

"Which means your demon ass is going to be a mortal ass, pretty damned quick," Dean added. There was no mistaking the depth of complacency in him, Crowley thought uncomfortably as he registered the words. He looked at Sam.

"What's he mouthing on about?"

Sam smiled slightly. "You're the third trial, Crowley."

* * *

_**Heaven**_

The angel walked into the glass and stone office briskly, slowing as he realised that the auburn-haired woman sitting at the desk was not going to look up from the file she was reading.

"What is it, Nathaniel?"

He swallowed against a sudden dryness in his throat and gathered his thoughts. "One of the _Irin_ has reached out to us," he said, looking at her. "He's found Castiel."

Naomi looked up, one brow rising questioningly. "Where?"

"A drinking establishment, in Houston," Nathaniel said, dragging in a nervous breath. "And …"

Naomi sighed inwardly, setting the file down on the desk and folding her hands as she looked at him patiently.

"What?"

"He says that Castiel is not alone."

"Who was he with?"

"By the description, it is difficult to be sure, the _Irin_ haven't seen him for thousands of years, not since –"

"Nathaniel," Naomi snapped. "Who?"

"I think it is him," Nathaniel said, a little dazedly. "The Scribe."

"Thank you, that is all," Naomi said abruptly, staring down sightlessly at the file on her desk.

"I could –"

"That is all!"

Nathaniel turned away and left the office and Naomi stood up, walking around the desk restlessly. The Scribe. He had disappeared more than three thousand years ago, taking the Word and its power with him. The archangels had spent a thousand years in concerted searching for the angel only to fail.

Castiel was no longer of use, she thought, pacing up and down the long room. And neither was the angel tablet. With the Scribe in their possession, they would have access to the power of the Word without them. She would have the power she needed to overcome the factions and unite everyone again, at first in fear, it was true, but slowly, in obedience once more.

Stopping suddenly in the centre of the room, she closed her eyes. She needed her most obedient subjects for this. Calling to them, she heard their minds, and told them what they had to do.

* * *

_**Houston, Texas**_

"What can I get you?" Dwight Charles stood by the table and looked down at the two men.

"Uh … coffee, thanks," Cas said glancing at the bar. "If you have it?"

"Always got joe," Dwight said, looking at the other man.

"A draught, thanks," Metatron said. "Whatever's on tap."

"Coming right up."

They watched him walk back around the long counter.

"How long do we have to wait?"

"As long as it takes –"

The angels appeared in the room and hands seized the scribe's jacket, hauling him out of the chair. Cas found himself standing, the sword hilt in his hand with no real recollection of the movement in between.

"Kill him," Naomi said coldly, staring at Castiel.

Arissiel moved forward, long hair swinging forward over her shoulder as she lifted her sword, her movement cautious as she felt for her footing on the smooth wooden floor.

Cas looked at her sorrowfully, seeing her doubt behind the obedience. Naomi had turned them all into monsters, he thought tiredly.

The gunshot rang out and Iophiel clutched a hand to his shoulder. Behind the bar, Dwight stood with the gun raised to his shoulder, his face hard.

"The next one won't wing you," he said warningly. "Take it someplace else."

The angel disappeared and reappeared behind him in the space of an eyeblink, grabbing the man's shoulders and pitching him headfirst into the small countertop glass-fronted fridge. Dwight smelled the sickly scents of wine coolers and alcopops surrounding him as his vision dwindled and he slid to the floor.

"Let him go," Cas said.

"Haven't you caused enough harm already, Castiel?" Naomi snapped at him.

Cas walked toward Arissiel, watched her back away. He'd heard some things of what the angels called him, thought of him, in Heaven … _Amma_, the Cursed One, in Enochian. And _Teloch_ … spirit of Death. And _Iaidon_ … the all-powerful, but the connation had always been ascribed to the Lightbringer. All powerful destructor.

"Stop!" Metatron called out, looking at him. "Please, Castiel, don't make this any worse." The scribe stared up at him, his expression beseeching. "Please!"

Cas stood there as they disappeared, the flutter of wings echoing from the walls and floor, leaving him alone.

* * *

_**Jackson, Minnesota**_

"Where is it?" Dean looked at the Good Shepherd Cemetery as he drove past, the narrow asphalt road petering out into a rutted and muddy gravel road as they followed it along the river.

"In between the marsh and the river," Sam said, gesturing vaguely ahead. "Hasn't been used for twenty years, but it was in continuous use for the previous hundred years."

The Impala bounced over the potholes and splashed through the sheets of water that lay over the mixture of mud and gravel and as they came around the bend they saw it, dilapidated and rundown, paint peeling from the siding but the structure intact, the bell tower still straight, the large gothic arch at the front overpowering the church's otherwise modest frame.

Driving straight to the steps in front of the doors, Dean stopped the car, looking over his shoulder at Crowley.

"Ready to be cleansed?" he asked the demon with a one-sided grin.

Crowley glared at him and hunched against the seat.

"That's too bad, 'cause it's the only thing we've got left on our To Do list," Dean told him, getting out of the car and opening the rear door, his hand hooking in the long chain between the two shackles that now encircled both Crowley's wrists and dragging the demon out.

Looking down at the puddle of muddy water he was standing in, Crowley exhaled in disgust. Six-hundred dollar Italian leather shoes. _Ruined_. Dean followed his gaze and the grin lifted a little higher.

"But the expression on your face? Priceless," he said, reading the demon's thoughts all too easily.

Crowley scowled and stumbled forward as Dean shoved him toward the church. He didn't know what the third trial entailed and the Winchesters had been vague, as usual, about the details. That they needed consecrated ground to do whatever it was they were going to do him seemed ominous.

* * *

The interior of the church was a little drier than the exterior. Missing roof tiles let in the soft drizzle and the floor was slick with moisture, Dean's devil trap remaining obstinately wet as the paint sat on the wet timber floor.

Crowley leaned forward in the chair, the rattle of the chain behind him bouncing off the empty walls. It'd taken Dean five minutes to install the anchor plate in the church floor. Crowley wondered if the wood was rotten. The collar around his neck was marked with the same binding sigils as the steel cuffs, the pure iron blistering the skin under it.

"You really think this is going to hold me?" he asked Dean coolly. "That you're going to _cure_ me or whatever it is?"

Dean tossed the can onto the pew at the end of the room and walked out. If they'd had a bit more time, it would've been better to use a couple of anchor points for the collar and blood for the trap but when did they ever have the time for those kinds of niceties?

He walked down the steps and around the car, finding Sam by the open trunk, decanting holy oil into a screw-top jar.

"He's primed," he said, walking around him. "How're you feeling?"

Sam looked at him and back at the jar. "Honestly? For the first time in a long time … it feels like we're gonna win." He put the ceramic ewer back in the trunk and looked at his brother. "I'm good."

"Yeah, well, no dancing in the end zone until we're finished," Dean said dryly. "What does the Father's playbook say now?"

Sam screwed the lid on the jar and tossed it into his duffle. "Well, now that we've got the consecrated ground, I just give Crowley one dose of blood, every hour for eight hours, and seal the deal with a bloody fist sandwich. That should do it."

"Your blood's supposed to be purified, isn't it?"

Sam looked down at the roll of syringes in his hand. "The burning stopped. When we crossed into Minnesota. Aside from the damp here, I haven't coughed since we hit Bobby's."

"Is that enough?"

"I think it means the demon blood has gone, but no," Sam said, shaking his head and putting the roll into the duffle. "It's not enough for this."

Dean looked at him. "You, uh, ever done the forgive-me-Father before?"

"Once," Sam said, his gaze cutting away over the car. "When we were kids."

He looked back at his brother and saw Dean's eyes widen slightly.

"Which is why I have no clue what to say now."

"Well," Dean said diffidently. "I could give you a few suggestions, if you want?"

"Yeah, uh, okay," Sam said. "Yeah, sure."

"Alright, just spitballin' here, but if I were you … uh … Ruby?"

Sam straightened a little, looking away as Dean continued, the list of sins coming out fast and easily.

"Killing Lilith, letting Lucifer out. Losing your soul? Giving up on looking for me when I went to Purgatory –"

"Uh, yeah, thanks," Sam muttered into the trunk as he bent to pull out the duffle.

"For starters," Dean said, shrugging as Sam wrapped his arms around the bag and walked away, hunched up. He watched Sam stop at the foot of the stairs, his back still to him.

"What?"

"Will he forgive me, for – for all of it?" Sam said, his voice almost too low for Dean to hear him.

Dean sighed and walked around the car. "That's the deal, isn't it? Say you're sorry, mean it and it's all gone?"

"Sounds easy, huh?"

Dean ducked his head. It had always sounded too easy for him. No guilt. No pain to pay.

"I don't know," he said to his brother. "Maybe the hard bit is admitting to it in the first place? Taking responsibility?"

"You do, all the time," Sam said, lifting his head and looking at him. "Why don't you feel like it's all gone?"

"I don't know, Sam," Dean said softly, looking at the dull reflection of the sky in the puddle at his feet. "I don't know."

Sam turned away, climbing the steps and walking into the church.

Behind him, Dean leaned against the hood. He'd never pretended that he hadn't done the things he'd done. Not once. No matter how tempting it'd been to try and put the blame elsewhere. But he'd never felt as if knowing his choices and his mistakes had made a difference either. The load was the load and he'd just kept piling it on, no longer wondering how long he could carry it, or when it would get so heavy he just collapsed under it all.

He'd never asked for forgiveness either. The thought slid into his mind and he looked at it for a long moment. Did he need the forgiveness of God? Or just himself?

He rubbed a hand along his jaw, the stubble pricking his fingers, and straightened up, going back to the trunk to pack away what they didn't need.

* * *

The confessional was on the left hand side of the front doors, a small cupboard, divided in half and screened between. Sam opened the door, looking in at the tiny space, hearing the demon's breathing behind him.

He stepped in and closed the door behind him, kneeling on the floor awkwardly in the darkness.

"Okay," he said, glancing up nervously as he cleared his throat. "If anybody's listening … here goes."

At first, nothing came to him and the silence seemed to ring with accusations, half-heard or felt, prickling along his nerves. _Just start anywhere_, he told himself. Start with Jess and a desire to kill so strong it had shaken what he'd known of himself.

He talked about how he'd felt and he talked about what he'd done. After a while, he realised that he was still trying to rationalise it, to justify it. And he knew, without a shred of doubt, that he could not ask for forgiveness if he didn't really believe he needed it. He started again.

Like Lucifer, his sin had been pride. Pride and the arrogance that came with it. Pride and the carelessness that always accompanied it. With that blood rushing through his veins, he'd felt invincible and he'd looked at others as at lesser men, lesser beings. There was no untangling of the times he'd been driven or possessed or poisoned from the times he had not. He admitted to it all, his head bowed and the words pouring from him, his voice low and cracked and hoarse, his sense of himself, of who he was, bleeding and aching.

At the back of his mind was his brother's face, every emotion always showing, every thought clear, every argument and accusation and pain-filled apology as bright in his memories as when they'd occurred, and as agonising. _Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have killed. I have tortured. I have broken faith and trust. I have betrayed. I have never, ever, been able to live up to what he wanted from me, what he needed._

* * *

Dean leaned over the trunk, reloading the magazine with the modified hollow points. He'd gotten the idea from Jaws originally, drilling out the heads of the slugs and filling them with blessed saline solution, the demon's version of … well, not cyanide but a nasty surprise anyway, resealing them with wax. Worked a treat and hurt the hellspawn a hell of a lot more effectively than anything else he'd been able to figure – except Henry's binding sigil. But that really was a pain in the ass to carve into every bullet.

"Dean, I need your help."

The rush of wings filled the air beside him and he started, fingers scrabbling on the smooth brass casing as he looked around at the angel.

"Little busy, Cas, take a number." He forced the bullet into the magazine, and picked up the next.

"I'm afraid this can't wait," Castiel said, his voice hardening. "Naomi has taken Metatron."

Dean frowned at the clip and put it on top of the box of ammunition, straightening to look at the angel. "And you know Metatron – how?"

"I've been working with him on the angel trials," Cas said shortly.

"The what?" Dean blinked.

"We can shut it all down," Cas told him. "Heaven, Hell – all of it!"

"Slow down," Dean said, sitting on the edge of the trunk as he thought about the implications of that. "How'd you two hook up anyway?"

"He came to Lebanon, while you and Sam were looking for a demon," Cas said tightly. "He told me what's been happening up there, what it's come to – and he told me that we could shut the gates of Heaven, lock everyone in and prevent the war from spilling over down here. He doesn't need the tablets, he knows the trials."

Dean looked at him narrowly. "We're talking about the same angel, aren't we? The one who hid for three thousand years and let everything get this way?" he asked Cas. "The one who said he'd be forced into using the power of the Word of God if Heaven found him? He suddenly wants to go back there and what? Save the mooks who are hunting him?"

"Yes," Cas said, frowning slightly. "He wants to. But I'm the only one who can."

"You're the only one? Why?"

"Because I am – I was – a warrior," Cas said uncomfortably, looking away. "The trials are not easy."

"Huh," Dean said, getting back to his feet.

"I can't fail, Dean," Cas said vehemently, staring at him. "Not again. Not this time. I need your help."

"Uh, Cas, that's all well and good, but you're asking me to leave Sam, and we've got Crowley in there, tied and tressed," Dean said tersely. "Now if anybody needs a chaperone while doing the heavy lifting, it's Sam!"

He saw the angel's eyes shift past him at the same time as he heard the squelch of footsteps in the mud behind him. _Goddamn it!_ Turning around, he saw his brother's face twitch slightly, heard the half-hidden pain in his voice as he looked at Dean.

"You should go. Seriously."

"Oh, what? Leave you here with the King of Hell? Come on!"

Sam glanced back at the church, forcing the words past the thickness in his throat. "I got this."

He drew in a deep breath, looking back at his brother, mouth twisting up a little to one side. "And if you guys can lock the angels up too? That's a good day."

Dean's face was expressionless as he stared at Sam. If he stayed, if he told Cas to handle it on his own, he would be undermining his brother further, he knew. If he left, and anything happened to Sam, he wouldn't be able to live with it. It was the same choice as always, faced a thousand times, a million times. _You either trust him or you don't_, he told himself. He didn't wait for the answer on that.

"Look, I – I'm down with locking the angels in Heaven – just 'cause they're dicks," he said, looking at Sam. "But the demons? This is on us. It's always been on us."

Sam nodded, knowing what he meant. Everything that had gone on in their lives had been due to Hell's machinations. And Heaven's help, he thought caustically.

"Start the injections now," Dean said, thinking about how long he might need to get Cas through the next trial. There were too many variables, too many things he had no idea about. "If I'm not back in six hours? Finish it. No questions, Sam. No hesitations."

"Yeah," Sam said quickly, his face pinched-looking and pale. He hadn't considered doing this trial completely alone. But perhaps that was how it was supposed to be. Was always meant to be. He watched Dean turn to the trunk and pick up the angel tablet, still wrapped in its cloth. Behind his brother, Castiel reached out, and the two vanished amidst the sound of beating wings and the faint scent of flowers and feathers.

Sam looked at the open trunk. _This was it_, he told himself firmly. _One last throw of the dice, winner takes all_. He would see Dean look at him differently this time. He would see that or he would die trying.

He stepped toward the trunk and closed it, and turned to go back into the church.

* * *

_**Heaven**_

Like the human mind, holding onto the memory, to the details, of the body after the soul has passed beyond the flesh, the angels held onto the details of their vessels or constructs even in the plane of Heaven where thought was more powerful than muscle, and memory more painful than nerves.

Metatron didn't have to open his eyes to know where he was. The cool touch of the binders on what he remembered of his vessel's body. The lifeless sterility of the room which had never know the scent of sweat or blood, the perfume of a flower or the stench of sewerage, these things were enough. He opened his eyes.

A few feet away a figure wavered in and out of focus, like, he thought irrelevantly, a person behind old glass. He narrowed his eyes and the figure came into focus, his mind seeing her as she saw herself, in the immaculate construct of an auburn-haired woman with smooth, creamy skin and storm-wrack eyes.

"I know you," he said.

"I don't believe we ever officially met," she said, her voice light and echoing slightly in the pitilessly hard room.

"Naomi," he said, with a half-disbelieving smile. He turned his head to look at the wheeled tray beside the chair he was held in. "Your reputation precedes you." He turned back to her. "The archangels –"

"Wanted me to talk to you after God left," she cut him off, nodding.

"Talk? Is that what you call it?"

"That's all we start with, Metatron," she said reprovingly. "You left before you found out."

The scribe looked at her, his face becoming impassive.

"There's one question I'd like to ask, before we begin – officially," she said, stretching and standing as she moved from the desk to the tray. "We have searched for you for the last three thousand years, and we have failed to find you."

"That wasn't a question."

"Why did you come out of hiding?" she asked sharply, turning to look at him. "Why did you risk being found?"

"You didn't want the secrets of God, Naomi," he said to her coldly. "You wanted the power of God. Michael certainly did. And Raphael and Gabriel."

"Why did you step out into the open, Metatron?" she asked again, picking up the simple tool on the tray and looking back at him. "And what were you doing with Castiel?"

"Of the blessings set before you, make your choice – and be content," he intoned.

She looked at him, playing the words against her memories.

"Not a big reader, are we?" he sneered at her. "Life is experience and even ours are too short to experience everything. The lives of others set down and absorbed add to our experience daily, weekly, monthly. Experience is knowledge. And knowledge is power."

The woman bent toward him, the high-pitched frequency of the tool matching its resonations to the waves of energy cycling within him and his mind translated the resonance as pain.

* * *

_**Jackson, Minnesota**_

The altar was as clean as he could make it, and the syringes lay on a sterilised stainless steel tray, neatly set between the holy water, sterilised knife, plain saline solution and holy oil containers.

Sam tapped his forearm lightly and slid the needle into the vein when it rose, drawing two ccs into the syringe and pulling it out. He turned and walked back to Crowley.

"You really think injecting me with human blood is going to make me human? What, d'you read that on the back of a cereal box?" the demon asked mockingly as Sam got close to the chair.

Sam ignored him, slapping a hand against the side of Crowley's head and shoving it to one side to expose the carotid artery. He jammed the needle in where the artery ran over the long tendon and depressed the plunger, watching the blood go in. He stepped back, looking at Crowley.

_Nothing had changed_, he thought, the demon's face bland, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. _It will work_, he told himself. The blood is normal, _human_ blood, sanctified, purified, redeemed. _It'll work_.

Crowley's eyes narrowed as he watched Sam's expressions. "You're miles out of your league, Moose."

Sam turned away and Crowley called out. "See you in an hour?"

_It should've worked a little_, he thought worried as he walked to the altar. Father Thompson's had taken hours before the demon had been subdued, he reminded himself, a small voice of complete rationality somewhere at the back of his mind. Glancing at his watch, Sam lifted his hand to replace the syringe on the tray. _Father Thompson was just a man!_ The thought was in his head and he hunched forward as light rippled through his forearms, his fists balling up involuntarily as the power that seemed to control them fluxed through his nerves.

_NO!_ The shouted denial seemed to boom around in his head and he closed his eyes and set his jaw to keep it from leaking out.

_That was the old way of thinking, that you're different, better, stronger_, that pragmatic voice shouted back at him. _You are nothing special, Sam Winchester. Your soul is clean. Your blood is human. You … you need faith_, he whispered to himself. _Faith in what's happened. Faith in the power that's filling you. Faith in yourself_.

He watched the light die out of his skin, aware that he was panting as if he'd run a race and that Crowley, behind him, must have seen or heard a lot of that. _The blood will work, give it time_, he repeated to himself. _You're just a man too. But this trial is given to you to complete. To succeed. And you are going to do that._

"Are you alright there, Moose?" Crowley said behind him. "Not having a wee moment of self-doubt, are we?"

Sam looked down at the altar for a long moment, then turned and walked out of the church, striding past the demon without looking at him. The cold, damp air hit him in the face and he dragged in a deep lungful, letting his eyes close and feeling the tension run out of him.

He remembered the expression on Dean's face, when he'd first admitted to the visions, remembered wishing that Dean wasn't there, with the fear and the worry in the green eyes that always seemed to be watching him. They hadn't known about the blood back then, only the fire, and nothing had made any sense, not the disjointed and frightening glimpses he'd kept getting, of the other 'children', not the powerful feelings that had risen, pushing him this way or that, and not the anger that he'd thought was at Jess' murder but had been a part of him long before that.

He hadn't realised – hadn't _recognised_ – that the anger had never surfaced when he'd been with her until after she'd gone. Like Sarah, he thought, and the thought brought a sharp stab of grief. He still didn't know why. Only that it'd been a time of peace and he'd let it in the evil that had destroyed it.

_Not true_, he told himself. Evil had been there, but if he looked at realistically, objectively, he knew he couldn't've prevented her death. Couldn't have stopped Brady from re-enacting the nightmarish scene. _But ol' yellow eyes didn't send me back to be your friend. No, we could tell we were starting to lose you. You were becoming a mild-mannered, worthless sack of piss. Now, come on. We couldn't have that. You were our favourite_. Her death. Her very specific death.

_It's just when people are around me. I don't know, they get hurt._ He dragged in another deep breath. She hadn't then … or he didn't know if she had, he hadn't stayed around or checked back in to make sure. But she'd died anyway.

_It's not just about being forgiven, Sam_. The voice was in his mind, but it didn't sound like anyone he knew. _You must, in the end, forgive yourself_. He opened his eyes and looked across the grey and brown marsh, the water of the river and canal fish-scaled in dull light now as the light wind ruffled the surface. Clouds scudded across the sky, thin and twisting and blown into streamers and Sam shivered.

_It's over now. I'm finishing it_, he thought, his father's words echoing in his mind. Whether or not I'm strong enough or good enough or … whatever. Dean was right. No one else had a claim on locking the gates as much as they did. So many wrongs to make right. So many deaths to avenge. The thought held no anger at all. He was done with the black rage and the insatiable cravings and being different.


	47. Chapter 47 Oblation

**Chapter 47 Oblation**

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Kevin looked at the fire, leaning back in the comfortable arm-chair, his stomach full of hot food and drowsiness stealing through his thoughts. It was a much more comfortable place than Garth's boat, he thought vaguely, the depth of silence here soothing.

Everyone was dead. Everyone he'd known and cared about. He had only Crowley's word for his mother's death. Nothing he'd tried to do had been able to verify that one way or the other. But the continuing silence was its own verification, wasn't it? She would've moved Heaven or Earth to find him if she'd been alive.

So.

Alone.

And starting again.

He was so tired. He'd looked around the building when he'd gotten in, after stumbling and cursing through the illusory woods for nearly an hour, not sure that the utility hut was actually what he was supposed to be looking for. The bedrooms had been inviting. He'd been surprised to see Dean's – it looked like the hunter actually had put some thought into it, had levelled some care in the place that had obviously become a home to them. It wasn't what he knew or thought of the taciturn man.

Neither of them were really the way he thought of them, he realised, opening his eyes a little to watch the flames. Sam – at first he'd thought that Sam was kind. He was, of course, more attuned perhaps to people than his older brother, but at the same time, much more deeply driven than Dean. He didn't know how he knew that, something to do with the conduit in his mind, perhaps. But he was sure of it.

And Dean … he'd burst into the long, empty warehouse storeroom in time to see Dean with a knife pointed at his mother's chest as she'd struggled to hold him off her. When Crowley had smoked out and disappeared, Dean had let Linda Tran drop to the floor, turning to deal with the demon as he'd returned for the tablet in his own meatsuit.

He still remembered how much he'd hated Dean in that moment. It wasn't a rational feeling, that hatred. Just instinctive. His mother had pointed out in no uncertain terms that she would've made the same choice as the hunter in the same position and that had tempered his reaction a little. And he'd seen, more than once now, Dean's subtle withdrawal from him. Knew why that was. Without thinking about it, or trying for it, he'd found a vulnerability in the man he'd never suspected and he knew, pretty much for sure now, that Dean would never let him closer than arm's length, would always be gruff or joking or outright hostile rather than ever admit to having that vulnerability.

They weren't friends. And he thought, they never would be. Comrades in arms, perhaps. Something happened when you shared the same foxhole. Something that couldn't ever happen in real life – in ordinary, normal life.

If they hadn't shown up that night, where would he be? Dead, or missing a lot more body parts. Locked down in Hell, tortured by Crowley? Giving up the secrets of the tablets as the demon found them? Giving the King of Hell the power that had been locked into those tablets, not through their meaning but through the connection with the divine?

He had the feeling that no matter what Dean'd said, it wasn't over. The hunter was a great liar to those he didn't know. But lying to the people he knew – or was close to – he was useless. And Kevin had seen the way his gaze had shifted as he'd offered the small comment, back in Missouri. Dean wasn't sure.

The flutter of wings stirred the flames, sending them leaping up the chimney and rustling the pages of the books strewn across the table. He looked around in surprise, seeing Castiel and Dean standing there.

"Kev, glad you found the place," Dean said, turning to the table and pulling out the heavily wrapped tablet. He unwrapped it and set it on the tablet. "C'mon, we got six hours and we need to know what's on this."

"What is that?" Kevin got up and looked at it suspiciously.

He saw Dean's glance flicker away and he walked around the table, looking down at the stone. Not the demon tablet. This was the tablet for the realm of Heaven and the seraphim it contained.

"Is this a joke?" he said disbelievingly.

"No. It's the Word of God," Castiel said repressively.

Kevin tilted his head to look up at the angel and Dean saw the boy's eyes narrow.

"It's a tablet. Translate," he cut in. "That's what you do."

"Okay," Kevin snorted softly, looking back at the stone. "Let's start with … it's the angel tablet which I've never laid eyes on in my life. You want a translation in six hours?" He straightened up, pushing away from the table and walking to the sideboard. He picked up the crystal decanter of whiskey. "When it took me six months and a dead mom to translate a piece of the demon tablet?"

Dean watched in surprised bemusement as Kevin poured himself a glass of whiskey.

"According to your own words – _yesterday morning_ – this is _not_ what I do, it's what I _did_," Kevin continued, picking up the glass and returning to the armchair. "You told me I was out, Dean."

"Yeah," Dean said, exhaling. "Well –"

"And if this is going to be the 'guys like us are never out' speech – save it!"

Castiel's hands bunched in Kevin's sweater, and his fingers involuntarily released the glass as he was lifted out of the chair, barely hearing it smash on the floor as he was held close to the angel's face, surrounded by the oddly potent scent of flowers and feathers and beneath that the sharp bite of the spilled whiskey at their feet.

"Dean's right –"

"Cas!"

"– there is no 'out'. Only duty," Castiel ground out, ignoring Dean, ignoring the Kevin's attempts to get free.

"Get the hell OFF me –"

"You _are_ a prophet of the Lord," Cas cut him off angrily. "Always. And forever."

He threw Kevin across the floor to the table, the boy's hands slamming onto the surface on either side of the tablet. Dean saw the fear in Kevin's eyes. The angel was right, he thought. And he never should've told the kid that there was any chance of getting out. There never had been.

"Now, are you clear as to the task before you?" Castiel finished, staring down at him.

Kevin glanced up at Dean, meeting his eyes for a moment before Dean looked away. Feeling the angel's furious gaze on him, he nodded slowly.

"Then do it," Cas said sharply, walking behind him to Dean. "Let's go."

The room was filled with the sound of beating wings and the flames flickered again and then he was alone.

_Not friends_. Not when it came down to saving the world, Kevin thought bleakly. _Not even close_.

He looked down at the tablet and moved his hands, letting his fingers slide up and over the oily surface of the stone. At once, the conduit opened, and he began to read.

* * *

_**Jackson, Minnesota**_

Sam filled the third syringe, staring down at Father Thompson's notes as he drew the blood. The priest had had a question for each attempt, he thought vaguely. A means of judging the progression of the cure. _How did it feel when you ate his children?_ He looked absently at the holes ascending the vein in his arm as he thought about it. He couldn't think of something that would show Crowley's true state of mind. The demon had helped them in the past – purely to his own benefit – and he had the feeling that dealing with Crowley would be akin to dealing with Hannibal Lecter – the demon's skill in manipulation would only be fed by extrapolating what he thought was expected of him and it would make it that much harder to discern what was really happening.

Turning toward the chair and trap, he looked at the demon. Sweat was beading Crowley's brow although his expression remained pleasant, if a little condescending. _Actions, not words_, Sam told himself, finding the thought steadying. He pushed Crowley's head to one side and injected the third dose.

Crowley's face screwed up as the blood went in. He felt the needle withdraw and his hands snapped up to grab Sam's arm, fingers curling tightly around wrist and forearm and dragging it to his mouth. Sam yanked his arm backwards as he felt the demon's teeth sink into his skin above the inside of the wrist, unable to drop the syringe to use both hands and caught off-guard at the sudden attack.

He managed to pull free and looked in disbelief at the deep, even bite mark, the indentations filling with blood. He transferred the syringe to his right hand and slapped his left over it, staring down at the King of Hell in disgust.

"What the hell, Crowley!?" he demanded. Crowley looked up at him balefully and Sam swung his fist at the demon, hitting the cheekbone and knocking Crowley's head back against the high, timber back of the chair.

"Biting!?" Sam fumed. "Seriously?"

Walking past the demon, he headed for the car and the first aid kit in the trunk, holding his wrist, his head churning with a mixture of anger, confusion, disgust and annoyance. He couldn't think of a single reason the demon would resort to playground tactics.

* * *

Crowley listened to the stomping of Sam's boots leaving the church, hearing the slam of the front door behind him. He lifted his hand and let the blood in his mouth spill out onto his palm.

"_Inferni set no tor as_," he said softly to the blood. "_Nunc audite regum_."

The blood bubbled a little, thickening, and Crowley smelled the brimstone rising from it.

"For the love of everything," he muttered desperately to it. "Whoever is hearing this – if _anyone_ is hearing this – this is your _King_. Send help. Immediately!"

He glanced back at the door nervously. The goddamned giant was going to do it, he knew. The blood was working its way slowly through him but he could feel the changes, small, almost imperceptible right now, but growing, accumulating along with the blood and sinking through the cells that his blackened soul had permeated. He couldn't get away from it, couldn't hide behind the vessel's mind or find a crack or crevice to disappear into. Couldn't escape. Couldn't even kill the damned meatsuit without any power of any kind. He was well and truly stuffed and his only hope was that somewhere in the depths of the accursed plane, someone had heard.

* * *

_**Houston, Texas**_

The bar was empty. Almost empty, Dean corrected himself as he looked down the length of the counter at the single other customer, a bearded guy who was watching the other screen. Beer was good. And Dwight was a good barkeep, friendly but not overly so.

They were still messing around with Heaven and Hell, he thought sourly, lifting his beer and swallowing a mouthful. Still fighting a rearguard action, no matter how it seemed to be an offensive. Or were they? He thought about the knowledge held in the order's safehold, about the weapons he had now, about what they'd learned and what they knew. And about having a place to think - finally - without that low-grade tension constantly humming through their nerves that they would be found, attacked, killed. He'd been able to sleep in the room - his room - without nightmares for a while now. They had stronger traps, stronger guards, more information and more ways of getting it easily ... and very slowly, so slowly that he hadn't really seen it until now, they had people they could, in the last resort, turn to. Not that Garth or Charlie were Jim or Bobby or Rufus, he thought, with a soft snort. But ... he realised that he didn't feel so utterly alone now. Those people knew their life.

He looked up at the television above him. Some kind of weapons show, the guy on screen drawing back a compound bow.

_Try that with a fucking goddess' bow_, Dean thought sourly, hearing the front door open and close behind him. He looked around as the angel took the seat next to him.

"Anything? You were gone long enough."

"No," Cas said tiredly. "There was one female, but …"

"What?"

"I don't think she was a female," Cas said, folding his arms on the bar and looking around. "Anything here?"

"Free drinks," Dean said, shooting a glance down at Dwight. "Your buddy over there thinks you saved his life."

Cas looked down the counter as Dwight turned and saw him, lifting a hand with two fingers extended in a recognisable symbol for victory – or peace. Dwight nodded in acknowledgement and turned away, the sticking plaster over the cut on his forehead bright in the dim light behind the bar.

"You sure about this?"

Cas looked at him and shook his head slightly. Sure about what, he thought with a slightly hysterical edge. Sure about using a fail-safe provided by an entity that Metatron said wasn't even an entity to lock himself into a realm so that whatever was going on up there couldn't crawl out and come down here – for the third time?

"I mean, Sammy slamming the gates of Hell is one thing, but you're talking about boarding up Heaven, and locking the door behind you," Dean continued, seeing Cas' doubts in his expression.

"Yeah," Cas said, picking up the beer. "I know."

"You did a lot of damage up there, man," Dean reminded him. "You think they're just going to let that slide?"

Cas put the bottle down. "You mean, do I think they'll kill me?" He nodded thoughtfully, turning to look at the man sitting beside him. "Yes, they might."

He drew in a deep breath, the corner of his mouth lifting a little. "But there is a right and a wrong here, and you know it," he said softly.

Dean turned his head to look at him, the memory of shouting those words at the angel rushing back to him. "You gonna quote me to me now?"

"You were right," Cas said, with a one-shouldered shrug. "I have learned some things from you."

He watched the man look away, and sighed inwardly. He'd learned a lot, in truth. About humanity. About loyalty. About trust and the way it was so easy sometimes to choose a path that seemed to be the right one but was not. Angels did not do penance for their sins. Angels did not have regrets. Angels did not choose their own destiny. He sometimes wondered if Naomi wasn't right about him.

The parking lot door opened and they turned to look at the woman who entered, pushing a hand-cart loaded with boxes.

"Hey there," Dwight said as she stopped by the end of the bar. "Where's Ed?"

"Flu. I'm Gail," she told him, parking the cart.

"Well, okay then."

Dean's attention sharpened on them. "Show time."

"Lemme give you a hand." Dwight lifted the counter top and stepped through to pick up the carton of bottles.

"Oh, thanks," Gail said, putting her order book on the counter as Dwight lifted the box from the cart to the bar top. "You're like a real gentleman," she added, watching him shift the cartons and smiling at the man sitting next to her.

"Thanks," she said, pushing the invoice pad toward him as he straightened up.

"Gail, Rod," Dwight said, looking over the order and signing the bottom.

"Ma'am." Rod tweaked the bill of his cap.

"Rod rides a stool here most days," Dwight threw in, his attention on the list. He signed the book and looked down at her.

"I'll be seeing you both," Gail said, smiling at him as she slapped both men's shoulders lightly. She took the book and manoeuvred the cart around to the door as Dwight closed the counter.

"Thanks for the help!"

"No problem," Dwight said, watching her leave.

Down the bar, Dean's brows shot up as he watched her go, and Cas' drew together suspiciously.

Rod and Dwight turned back to the television, watching the details of the compound bow on the screen.

"Damn, that's sweet," they said in unison, and turned to look at each other with a dawning recognition.

Castiel got up, and Dean looked around as the angel walked past him, his own recognition of the match the Cupid had made coming a little more slowly. He got up, suddenly realising that Cas had left and he had no idea where or why.

* * *

_**Jackson, Minnesota**_

The rain had stopped. That was something, Sam thought tiredly. The walls jumped and bowed and flickered with every vagabond draught that slipped in through the holes – in the floor, in the cracks in the walls, through the roof – as the candle flames threatened to go out then flared into brightness again. Dose five lay on the tray and he willed himself not to feel the uncertainty that pressed up against him. Uncertainty of the power of his blood. Uncertainty of the strength of the demon behind him. Uncertainty of everything really, bulging in and out against the walls in his mind with each beat of his heart.

"Ha! How we doin', Moose?" Crowley called out derisively. "Ain't it about time for the next lurve injection?"

Sam turned and looked at him. He didn't seem any different. Didn't seem to be feeling anything any differently. It was hard to tell in the constantly moving light, but he couldn't even see if the King was still flop-sweating as he broke into song, an _a capella_ rendition of an old chart-topper.

He turned back to the altar as he felt the ripple passing through him, watching his hands close into fists, and the muscle and tendon and nerve and blood and bone light up from within as the power gathered in his arms and crackled ferociously there. He was sweating; he could feel it running down his face, dripping from his eyelashes and the ends of his hair. He hoped that Crowley's vision in the uneven light in the church was worse than his.

The rumbling started in his teeth, so far down in the lowest registers that he was subliminally aware of the pressure in his skull before he heard it with his ears. He swung around to look at Crowley, who was looking at the timber floor with interest as the walls shook and the rafters creaked and from the front of the church, the hardwood planks began to shiver and crack apart, a long fissure twisting and breaking through the timber to split apart the paint of the devil's trap.

"Did you really think you could kidnap the King of Hell and no one was going to notice? Moron!" Crowley rasped at him. Sam's gaze shifted as the front doors slammed open and the slender silhouette entered the church. He knew who it was without needing to see any further detail. Abaddon enjoyed an entrance.

"Hello, boys."

"That's my line," Crowley muttered, twisting futilely around in the chair to see her. "Abaddon. They told me you were dead."

"Tsk-tsk," she said softly. "So not."

"And the rest of the cavalry?"

"Oh, no," she said lightly. "It's just little old unkillable me."

Sam snatched the gun from the altar, wondering if he could possibly aim and fire and have any hope of hitting her, as he raised it to shoulder level. He managed to pull the trigger, the bullet zipping by Crowley's ear before it richoted from a steel hinge and buried itself in the wall.

Abaddon's dark red brows twitched as she gestured and Sam flew across the room, smacking into the wall and falling to his hands and knees on the floor, the gun skittering away from him.

"Brilliant," Crowley wheedled. "Why sent in a few grunts when you can send in a Knight?" He stretched a bit further around in the chair and shouted at Sam. "Say your prayers, Moose!"

Sam looked up as the archdemon lifted her hand abruptly. He was plucked from the floor and flung through the tall, stained-glass window behind him, landing flat on his back in the mud outside.

"That'll do," Crowley said, swallowing the last word quickly as he tried to hear where she was. "Undo these. I'll kill him myself."

Abaddon walked slowly down the church, the soft clock-clock of her bootsoles filling the church as she came past him and turned to stop in front of him.

"That was order?" she asked, her expression cool and faintly challenging. "Was it?"

Crowley looked into her eyes, cat-slanted and unreadable in the dim light. "I am your King," he reminded her sharply.

"About that," she said. The blow was fast and hard, and his head snapped to the side, blood gushing into his mouth from the sharp edges of his molars through the inside of his cheek.

Crowley looked back at her. The bitch was like Meg, he thought incredulously as a second blow mashed his lips into his teeth and loosened at least one of the front ones. What'd he ever do to her?

"Do you know what I find most shocking about time-travelling through a closet – and landing in the year 2013?" Abaddon asked him irritably, a right cross slamming into his jaw, followed by a sledge-hammer jab and an uppercut that lifted both the demon and the chair from the floor and toppled Crowley to the floor.

"Somebody thought it was a good idea to make you the King of Hell," she sneered, her nose wrinkling with a feminine distaste at the thought of it.

Crowley looked up, seeing the Taurus a foot or so away from him. He lifted his hand, reaching a little closer to it as he heard her boots coming around the base of the chair. She would kill him if he didn't kill her first, he thought desperately, freezing when he heard the clocking stop beside him.

"You know what that boy's trying to do, right?" he said, glancing up at her and back at the gun. "He's trying to shut the gates of Hell."

The archdemon lifted a brow as she walked past his feet, the pearl grips of the gun becoming visible beyond Crowley's head as she took another step. Crowley looked around and saw her expression flatten out as she saw how close the gun was. Abaddon flicked her wrist and the gun skated along the floor to the wall.

She crouched beside him. "Right now? You and I are going to talk about a little regime change."

"You whore," Crowley snarled. "I am your King!"

Her fist hit his chest and the Manhattan publisher's heart stuttered and faltered with the impact, ribs bent inwards but not yet broken. Consciousness fled as the blood in the demon withdrew from the extremities to protect the core and Abaddon straightened up slowly, her face thoughtful as she looked down at him.

A crossroad demon. _How_ had the throne gone to him? She walked around him, her gaze taking in the devil's trap and the chair and the bindings. _Serious mojo, those bindings_, she thought as she recognised the sigils. They had bound the Morning Star so tightly he'd only been able to whisper through the bars. What _was_ the boy doing, she wondered, turning to the alter.

The splash of the oil, pungent and sweet and clinging to her, was a shock. She hadn't heard him come in, hadn't smelled him or sensed him or caught the flicker of movement in her periphery. Oil dripped from her lashes as she opened her eyes to stare at the man standing before her. They widened when they saw the burning matchbook held up in one hand before he threw it to the floor at her feet.

The oil ignited instantly, swallowing her in flames that burned more deeply, more intensely than any fire – in or out of Hell. Twisted and tortured and charred and stripped utterly of the light that had once shone inside of her, the oil nevertheless reached out for the angel origins and she burst free of the meatsuit, leaving it to perish as she swung through the church, looking for a way out before the oil could reach out for her essence as well.

Sam ducked as the twisting ribbon of black smoke zigged and zagged across the church, gagging slightly at the stench of burning meat. He'd included the holy oil purely as a precaution, hadn't even thought of Abaddon coming for Crowley. He was relieved that the preparation had paid off.

He'd heard enough from the archdemon to realise that Crowley's takeover had not been a thing of destiny. Abaddon had been disbelieving when she'd looked at Crowley and he had the idea that a lot of Crowley's new-found powers were not a result of the demon becoming stronger, but that he'd found something that had given him strength … something borrowed, perhaps.

He pushed the thoughts, intriguing as they were, aside. If he cured Crowley and finished the job, he could satisfy his curiosity and shut down the danger at the same time. _Get your head clear, Sammy_, he heard Dean's voice in his head. _You need all your marbles for this damned deal._

* * *

_**Houston, Texas**_

Gail came down the steps at the back of the bar, slowing as she looked up and saw them standing there.

"My brother," she said politely, glancing briefly at Dean and back to Castiel.

"Give us your bow," Cas growled, the angel sword dropping from his sleeve into his hand as he took a step toward her, the cherubim taking a nervous step back.

"Whoa, whoa, hey," Dean said, taking a long stride to get in front of the angel and put a restraining hand on Cas' chest as the angel lifted the point of the sword. When had Cas become so ready to kill at any excuse, he wondered vaguely as he looked into his face.

"Talk first," he suggested mildly. "Stab later."

Cas looked at him, nodding reluctantly as he turned back to the cherubim.

"I need your bow," the angel tried again.

"Why?"

"You know what's happening at home?" Cas asked. "The fighting?"

She nodded. "To tell you the truth, I've been afraid to go home for some time now," she said uncomfortably. "Our orders used to come once a day, at dawn. Now, this is the first order I've received for a week and it came at midday. I - it's chaos."

"There are too many factions attempting to take the power for themselves," Cas agreed. "I have been working with the Scribe, to close the gates and force our people into uniting or surrendering."

"You think that will work?" she asked him curiously.

"Do you remember the First War?"

She nodded and Dean saw a tear slip down her cheek. He'd heard a little about it, from the angel he stood beside, the war of Lucifer's falling and angel killing angel, the rebels led by Lucifer and the Host of Heaven led by Michael.

"In that war, as bad as it got and as painful as it was, we had leaders," Castiel reminded her patiently. "We fought against the rebels for order and obedience and it was simple. No guerrilla battles. No traitors within the ranks. No plots and schemes to kill each other, just two armies, and their leaders." He looked up at the clear night sky. "Now, there are no leaders. Traitors infiltrate every group and murder is as common up there as it is down here. And it is only a matter of time before that fighting comes here, and destroys this plane as well."

He looked at her, drawing in a deep breath. "So, yes, I believe that it is the only way to protect what we were made for, even if it does not solve the problems immediately."

She nodded and stepped toward him, holding out her hand. On the palm, a brand became slowly visible, a double-curved bow with an arrow drawn through the centre. Dean looked at it, his gaze flicking to the angel as Cas lifted his sword, understanding too late what had to be done and what she was offering. Cas' blow was swift and he stepped immediately to her, his hand gripping the bloody wrist tightly.

In the reflected glow of the light of both seraphim and cherubim, Dean watched their faces, lifted to Heaven, eyes closed, joined in a way that was only possible to them, healing with the power of souls that only humans had.

Cas would never be human, he realised slowly. Would never understand the way humans worked. Angels had their giving and taking, their own hearts and minds, but no souls. No filter of conscience that learned and changed and grew. That forgave or not, hardened or softened with the experiences acquired over a lifetime. Cas had experience in plenty. But no – what? he didn't know, exactly – to fit that experience into. The angel could feel but there was no connection between feeling and action. What had Crowley said to him? Humanity put emotion before good, old common-sense. He might've been onto something there. Sam had said he didn't really feel, when he'd had no soul. Was it the same thing? Or something fundamentally different?

_Dean, I thought I was doing the right thing_. He remembered the pain in Cas' voice when he'd said it. _Yeah_, he'd replied. _You always do_.

It'd been true, he realised now. Uncomfortably true. Cas didn't have the particular mechanism that allowed him to differentiate between what seemed to be the right thing and what actually was the right thing. It might be a differentiation that only a soul could make.

The difference between the good of the one and the good of the many came down to one thing – a willingness to sacrifice oneself and oneself alone. Doing the job because you were the only who could do it. Doing it because it had to be done, no matter what the cost. But only if the choice was freely made. Someone forced into it was not good enough. Kevin flicked briefly through his mind and he closed his eyes. He would deal with Kevin when he got back home.

_Home_. Another piece of a puzzle he'd been doing his whole life. His eyes opened and he felt a familiar tug inside. _Home is a place to rest. A place to be safe_. And by that definition, he hadn't had a home since he'd been four. But he had one now.

When Cas talked of home, it was Heaven he meant. And that was as it should be, he thought. His brothers and sisters. His family were all there. Some of them were dicks. Some of his family had been dicks as well. You can't pick family, as the saying went. And blood wasn't enough.

He'd wanted something that the angel hadn't been really capable of giving, he thought. Wanted family because Sam had been slipping through his fingers and he couldn't hold on, couldn't protect him or keep watch over him. Couldn't trust him. Benny had been the same. Looking for someone to trust because blood hadn't been enough. He'd overlooked the fact that Sam had struggled and tried to live up to his expectations. Tried to be stronger. To do what he thought his older brother would want him to do. Save the world. Sacrifice himself. Protect people.

Castiel released the cherubim and Dean pulled his attention back to them, seeing her hand restored, minus the small brand now. Cas nodded to her and she turned and walked away across the parking lot, disappearing into the darkness as the angel bent and picked up the hand.

"Just one more," Cas said, turning on his heel to look at Dean. "And then I can close them."

"Sure as hell a lot faster than what we've been doing," Dean commented, only a trace of envy along his voice. "I'll give Kevin a call, see what he's come up with."

* * *

_**Heaven**_

The room was peaceful, the light reflecting from a thousand different shining surfaces, bright and yet diffused. Naomi looked down at the angel in the restraints, one eye open and filled with blood, the trail of it spilling down his cheek, feeling none of the peace, her mind churning around an endless and disbelieving track as she thought through what she'd seen in that angel's mind.

When their Father had disappeared, it'd taken the archangels some time to realise the knowledge that the scribe had and longer to work out what to do about it. By the time they'd organised themselves, Metatron had gone as well, disappearing to the material plane and hiding himself so well that they'd never had even a hint of a lead in the years they'd searched for him.

And although never forgotten, the search for him, for the key to unlock the power of the Word, had been sidelined and deprioritised as new schemes were wrought and new alliances were made.

She had managed to keep out of the political manoeuvring that had categorised the relationships between those of the Eighth Choir as much as possible. She'd reported only to Michael for a millennia. And then Michael had disappeared, had fallen into the Cage with Lucifer and had been locked down there, no rescue attempt deemed possible without the risk of releasing his brother as well. For a time, it'd been Raphael who'd taken over the reins of Heaven. She never even knew what had happened to Uriel or Gabriel, although whispers of betrayals and murder had emerged gradually in the last few years. But with Raphael's disappearance and presumed death, and the return of Castiel, filled with the power of the subsumed souls of Purgatory, it'd been pretty much every angel for themselves.

And now, she thought, he'd returned. The other eye opened and looked at her.

"And – did – you find – what you were looking for, Naomi?" the scribe asked, his throat dry and the words coming out in disjointed chunks.

"What purpose do you have with Heaven, Metatron?" She leaned toward him, focussing on the clear eye. "Why have you returned?"

"Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb."

Her brows drew together as she stared. "You seek revenge, scribe? For what?"

"Did you know that down there I met an angel who seeks penance? For the sins he's committed?" Metatron rolled the clear eye. "No soul yet still contrition. That is amazing. It is something He never considered, that I am sure of."

He looked at her. "All I wanted, Aunty Em, was to come home!"

His hands batted restlessly against the ends of the chair's arms and he twisted away from her. "No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows its own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart."

"Metatron, why are you here?"

"To take back what is mine," he said suddenly, the clear eye narrowed in cold, reptilian fury. "To repay the hospitality of my brothers."

She stepped back, staring at him. The room filled with the sound of beating wings and he looked at the emptiness and smiled.

The memory of the body, of nerve and muscle and blood and bone, was not necessary. It was a trick of the mind, a seeking of reassurance that creatures of energy could not simply dissipate without some kind of material binding. He'd learned how to trick the trick and he looked down at the bindings holding him to the chair, and closed his eye and vanished.

* * *

_**Jackson, Minnesota**_

Sam braced himself and heaved, the heavy chair and the demon swinging back to an upright position in the broken devil's trap on the floor, Crowley's chains clinking as he tried to remain conscious, swaying in the seat.

"You did good back there, Moose," he mumbled to Sam. "I'll deny it if you ever quote me – but, but I'm proud of you."

Sam glanced at him dryly as he picked up the can of paint his brother had left. "Thanks."

"Wait-uh-no." The demon stared at the can as Sam shook it up and walked behind him to repair the trap. "What's that?"

"Just what it looks like," Sam said, wondering if the paint was bridging the crack. The bindings were more powerful than the trap, but even Abaddon had taken the time to break it.

"Are you joking?" Crowley said incredulously, twisting wide-eyed in the chair to see the man. "I just saved your life!"

Sam laughed humourlessly. "Seriously?"

"Seriously? Me seriously?" Crowley stuttered. "We just shared a foxhole, you and I! And still you're going to do me like this?"

Sam picked up the syringe from the altar as he dropped the paint and wheeled around, taking the couple of strides to the chair and pushing Crowley's head to the side as he punched the needle in and pushed the plunger.

"Ah!" Crowley's face screwed up. It was cumulative, he knew. Things were building up inside. Things he didn't recognise. Didn't trust. "Ah. What are you doing to me, Moose?"

Sam drew out the needle and walked back to the altar, ignoring the demon. Behind him, Crowley started muttering.

"What?" He turned around, looking at the demon. Crowley was slumped forward in the chair, his voice rising and falling indecipherably and Sam walked warily toward him.

The demon's head snapped up, dark eyes staring at him. "D'you ever love a woman so much you'd've done anything, Moose?"

"What?"

"I did. I did," Crowley snapped at him irritably. "I did so. I was going barmy."

"Don't talk to me about this, Crowley," Sam said warningly. "Don't you dare talk to me about that."

"But I did!" Crowley whined, his eyes unfocussed. "And she laughed."

Sam's eyes narrowed as he watched the expressions flit across the demon's face.

"May. It was May. The flowers. Church," Crowley's head tipped back a little as the words poured out in a stream without emphasis or inflection. "She said yes and I was–I was–I was – SO happy and it was May and it seemed like everything would really be okay. May. She said. YES! But –" His head dropped forward and he started to shake. In the murky light Sam could see the perspiration running down his face, dripping from his chin onto the metal chain that connected the two cuffs.

"She laughed. Laughed and told me," Crowley said fragmentedly, his chest heaving. "The old days. Laughed and laughed. I didn't know what to do. I thought it all changed. Thought it would be. That night. Laughed at me." He lifted his head and his eyes focussed abruptly on Sam, narrowing as he stared. "She didn't, Sam. Didn't at all. Just wanted the business. Just laughed at me and told me there were others."

His eyes dropped shut and Sam watched as a tear squeezed out of the corner, rolling slowly down the stubbled cheek.

_It was happening_. The relief that swamped him took the strength from his legs as he saw the demon shaking soundlessly in front of him. It was happening. It was going to work.

Crowley shook his head abruptly, lifting his hands and rubbing his face. "What?"

Looking at him, Sam couldn't think of a single thing to say. He turned away and walked back to the pew in the corner, leaning back and shutting his eyes.

* * *

Sam woke suddenly, heart hammering at the base of his throat as he lifted his arm and looked at his watch. Almost time. He looked at Crowley. The demon sat completely still, eyes half-closed, skin gleaming with moisture in the flickering light.

Getting up, he walked to the altar and picked up the clean syringe. Dose six. He slid the needle into the vein and drew back the plunger.

"Would it be … possible," Crowley said quietly behind him. "Moose. I'd like … to – to ask you … a favour."

"Sam?"

Sam looked up at the doubt in the demon's voice. He didn't think he'd ever heard that particular tone in Crowley's voice. He got up, walking to the chair, looking down at Crowley as the demon lifted his head and looked up at him.

"When you were … confessing," Crowley said hesitantly. "What did you say?"

The demon saw the wariness in the man's face and shook his head. "I only ask because … given my … history –" He dropped his gaze to the floor, blinking rapidly. "Where – where can I even start – to look – to ask – to … beg … for forgiveness?"

Sam looked at him. "How 'bout we start with this?"

Crowley turned his head and closed his eyes and Sam slid the needle into the artery, sending the contents rushing through into the demon's bloodstream.

When he pulled the needle out, he stood there for a moment, until Crowley looked back at him.

"I don't know how it works with demons," he said slowly. "For people … there are three things that you need for redemption. Acceptance. Contrition. Forgiveness."

The demon looked up at him. "Am I dying, Sam?"

"I don't know."

"Are you?"

Sam's face screwed up a little as he turned away. "I don't know."

* * *

_**Houston, Texas**_

"Kevin? Tell me something!" Dean said shortly as he heard the prophet pick up the phone.

"Dean, are you sure that Castiel has those trials right?" Kevin said without preamble as he looked at the tablet in his hands. "I think I've found the section about the trials – but there's nothing in here about nephilim – or a Cupid's bow – or anything even close to those."

"Oh, come on, Kev," Dean said tiredly, walking beside Cas as they crossed the parking lot. "We're on the one-yard line here –"

"Okay, and I should have mentioned this six months ago, but the sports metaphors … I don't get them, Dean!" Kevin said. "You wanna motivate me? Magic cards! Skyrimmers. Aziz Ansari –"

"What?" Dean blurted out. "Yeah, I don't know what those words mean!"

Castiel stopped as he felt the angel materialise behind them, turning to see Naomi standing there.

"I'm not here to fight you, Castiel," she said quickly, holding her hands out pacifically. "Not any more."

Dean stumbled as he glanced back, noticing that Cas wasn't there any more and hearing Naomi's voice.

"Dean? Dean?" Kevin's voice sounded tinnily from the forgotten phone in his hand.

"Where is Metatron?" Cas walked toward her and Dean followed him.

"He told you he was going 'fix' Heaven, didn't he?" Naomi said, her gaze flickering briefly to the man behind the angel and back. "Murdering a nephilim? Cutting off a Cupid's bow? It's a lie. All of it."

Cas glanced back at Dean as he walked up beside him.

"Castiel, I've been in his head –"

"You've been in all our heads," Cas snapped at her. "That's the problem!"

"No," Naomi said, focussing on him. "Not this time – I –"

"This is what you do," Cas cut her off. "You distort the truth until there's nothing left of it, only what you say, what you want us to think! I'm trying to contain Heaven! Metatron is trying to contain the madness up there!"

"Metatron is looking for revenge, Castiel," Naomi said cuttingly. "Metatron wants to break every angel and take back what he thinks he's lost."

"What do you mean?" Dean asked.

Cas scowled. "Dean –"

Naomi looked past the angel. "He wants to expel all angels from Heaven. Just as Lucifer was cast out," she added, looking back at Castiel. "Tear their Grace from them and throw them down."

"Cast you out?" Dean frowned. "To where? Hell?"

She turned to look at him and the streetlight caught the glitter in her eyes. "Here."

"Lies!" Cas stepped forward and Dean found himself grabbing the angel for the second time that night, fingers curling around Cas' arm and holding him back.

"Wait!"

Naomi bowed her head. "You were right, Castiel. We all sinned when He left. We lost sight of what we were made for and we believed that we were greater than than we were." She looked up at him. "Our task was to shepherd. To guide. To teach. You were right and I was wrong. I was filled with hubris and the belief that I knew the mind of our Father."

She looked at Dean. "Release him … please. Disobedience was once our greatest crime. I am guilty of that crime, Castiel. More so than you ever were."

Castiel blinked at her, turning away. He'd never heard contrition in an angel's voice. Other than his own, that was. If she was lying, and he couldn't think of a reason it would benefit her to do so now – he lowered the point of the sword as he looked back at her.

She looked at Dean. "I want nothing more than for you and your brother to close and lock the gates of Hell," she said. "But I told you that you could trust me – and if he completes the third trial, he is going to die."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean asked, his neck prickling. A lie – or a truth?

"I saw it," she said. "In Metatron's mind, saw it clearly. It was God's intention, a measure of the strength of the faith of the contender. Self-sacrifice, freely chosen and entered with courage and for the good of others – the soul is cleansed of everything and returns to Heaven in glory. It is – was – His highest virtue."

Dean stared at her. _Sam wouldn't_, he thought. He had his light. He had his faith in them, he wouldn't choose it – if he knew about it.

"Castiel, I beg of you, stop this path you're walking. Metatron has been neutralised," she said. "Kill me, if you feel that it is your duty, but if you want to return – we need someone who still sees what we were charged to do."

She vanished with the sound of the flutter of wings and Dean remembered the phone in his hand, lifting it sharply.

"Hey! Talk to me, is she lying?"

"I don't know –" Kevin said doubtfully, staring down at the tablet.

"Well find out!"

"She's lying," Cas said, but he didn't sound certain, Dean thought, turning to look at him.

"Take me to him," Dean said. It'd been seven hours, maybe a little more. There was no fucking time for a debate.

"Dean –"

"Take me to him – NOW!"

* * *

_**Jackson, Minnesota**_

Crowley sat in the chair, shivering and shaking as every deed, every thought and plan and idea flooded through him. Evil. Stained. Darkness and torment and pain. It had burned new pathways through his mind. It had bent and mangled and twisted him. He had become something else.

Because, on their wedding night, she had looked at him and had laughed. Fresh tears poured down his face. It had hurt. Of course it had. But it hadn't been much of a reason to go to the crossroads and bury the box and call out to the powers he'd only half-believed in, had it?

Three hundred and eighty-three years of life had given him a certain perspective on the variety of suffering of a mortal lifespan. Pain and pleasure and the way the two could be reversed. New directions. Old directions. Pretending that it hadn't been his fault. _Not my choice. Not my responsibility. Not my FAULT!_ But those choices had not come from anyone else. There were his. He owned them. And he had paid for them.

_They are my choices_, he thought groggily, emotion and thought and pain spinning turgidly. _They were my actions and I did them knowingly and with aforethought_. The shivering became more pronounced as the admission slid through the cells of the vessel's body, the cells filled with his soul, more quickly than the blood had.

Sam picked up Father Thompson's notebook, clearing his throat and starting to read.

"_Ego præcipio tibi ut dimittam vos, et cogere ténuit innocentis. Abluti estis in animo mundabo sanguinem Agni, et facta est super magnitudine mali dolori tibi!_"

He picked up the knife, drawing the edge across his palm. The light that spilled along the edges was not the red-gold of a demon's wound, but a silver-rose as the power fluxed through him, filling his hands, his arms, throbbing unseen at the base of his throat.

* * *

Dean felt his knees rock as his feet felt the ground under them again and dragged in a breath. He headed for the doors of the church.

"Dean!" Cas called out behind him. "I'm not wrong. I have to get to Heaven!"

"Cas, wait –"

The sound of wings carried over the marsh and he stared around in frustration. "Cas! Goddammit! Just another five minutes!"

He swung around to the steps and raced up them, hitting the double doors with both hands as he burst into the church.

"Sammy! STOP!"

Sam flinched back as he turned to see Dean standing there.

Dean could see the light now, rippling through his brother's arms. _God, what the hell had happened to his brother? What had been done to him?_

"Easy there, okay?" he said quietly, holding his hands out appeasingly. "Just take it easy, we got a slight change of plan."

"What!?" Sam stared at him. "What's going on? Where's Cas?"

"Metatron lied," Dean said, wondering how much control Sam had over whatever it was that was lighting him from the inside. He needed Sam to listen. "You finish this trial? You're dead, Sam."

Sam shook his head. "So?"

Dean blinked. It wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting.

"Look at him!" Sam shouted, his right hand curled around the cut. "Look at him! Look how close we are!" He staggered slightly to one side as his voice shook. "Other people will die if I don't finish this!"

"Sam, think about it," Dean said slowly, walking toward him, his thoughts coalescing as he spoke. "All the things we've done, everything we've learned – and all the knowledge we have now – we can do more with that than you giving up your life for this one thing." His face crumpled a little as he realised that he'd been wrong about their life, about what they could do and what they'd done. There was a way, he just hadn't seen it before. Everything that they needed, they had - except each other. He tried to find the words for what he meant to say, what he needed to say. "You told me that you saw a light at the end of this tunnel, man. You told me that you could help me find it and you did – I can see what you did – I can see a way through – but not without you, Sammy. I can't do this without you."

"You can barely do it with me," Sam said hopelessly, staring at him as his breathing constricted. "I mean, you think I screw up everything I try – you think I need a chaperone, remember?"

Dean felt his stomach drop. "Come on, man, that's not what I meant –"

"No, that's _exactly_ what you meant," Sam cut him off. "You wanna know what I confessed in there?" He gestured to the confessional behind his brother. "What my greatest sin – my greatest _regret_ – was?"

He looked away for a moment, sucking in a breath. "It was how many times I let you down."

_No. Not that_. Dean felt the recognition hit him like a sledgehammer, freezing him from the inside out. He knew that feeling. He'd lived with it every single day from the age of four until his father had died when he was twenty-seven. He didn't want to know that Sammy felt that as well – felt it about him. Not strong enough. Brave enough. Smart enough. Not man enough. Not the man he'd wanted to be. Years of doubt and uncertainty. Years of knowing that when it had counted, he'd let him down. _No. Not that. Not for Sam_.

"I can't – I can't do – that – again," Sam's voice broke and Dean looked up at him, the gleam of moisture on his brother's face caught in the candlelight.

"Sam –"

"What happens when you've decided that I can't be trusted - again?" Sam asked him, shoulders shaking. "I mean who are you going to turn to next time – instead of me? Another angel?" His face twisted as his throat closed up. "Another – vampire? Do you have any idea of what it feels like to watch your b-brother –?"

"Just wait – hold on, hold ON!" Dean interrupted fiercely, holding up his hand. He couldn't hear this. Not now. Couldn't hear the torment or the doubt. "You seriously think that?" he asked Sam. "Because none of it – _none_ of it – is true!"

He watched Sam's face screw up in pain, unsure if it was the light that was throbbing now in his brother's arms – or if it was the years of pain Sam had been holding onto in his heart.

"Listen, man, I know we've had our disagreements – fuck, fights, whatever you want to call 'em, I know I've said some crap that's set you back on your heels," he admitted readily, struggling to find the words that he needed, the ones that would get through this time. "But Sammy, come on … I was _there_ in that convent. I _left_ what I thought I wanted – to watch your back; I killed Benny to save you and I'm willing to let this bastard and every fucking hellspawn created – _walk_, because of _you_!"

He stared at Sam as his brother's gaze cut away, not knowing if what he was saying was reaching him or not, his chest getting harder to force air in and out of, and everything he'd given to keep his brother safe pulsing behind the walls that kept him sane.

"Don't you dare think that there is anything – past or present – that I would put in front of you! That meant more to me than you! It has _never_ been like that – ever!" Dean saw Sam flinch at the last word and tried to drag back his own pain, pack it away. "I need you to see that … Sam … I'm begging you to see it."

For a long moment, he wasn't sure Sam believed him, or if his brother was so riddled with pain that he would finish the trial just for it to finally be over. Sam shifted from foot to foot, his face and hands spasming as the light oscillated beneath his skin, blood dripping from his hand when his fists balled up. When he looked back at Dean, there was a plea in his eyes.

"How do I stop?" he asked.

* * *

_**Heaven**_

Castiel looked around the room, his attention sharpening on the desk. Naomi lay there, head twisted to one side, her eyes open and filled with blood. From the back of her skull, the frequency tool protruded.

Metatron walked up behind him. "She told you I lied, didn't she?"

Cas turned and felt the prick of the angel sword under his jaw.

"Have a seat," Metatron said, his gaze flicking to the chair behind them. "And all will be explained."

"No," Cas said.

The prick became a puncture as the tip penetrated the vessel's remembered skin and blood ran down the blade.

"I insist." Metatron looked at him, and the angel saw a flat emptiness in the scribe's eyes. "You're wondering if I can ram this up into your mind and kill you, Castiel? I can and I will and it will not bother me in the slightest."

Cas backed to the chair, half-falling into it as the sword slid a little deeper.

"This is for revenge?" he asked as the bindings clicked softly around his wrists.

"Revenge," Metatron mused. "A dish best eaten cold." He put his hand on the angel's forehead and shoved it back against the chair. "No, not entirely, but happily, it's nothing you have to worry about any longer, Castiel."

Cas froze as he felt the cold tip of the sword against his throat, the scribe slicing across the skin, opening a deeper cut.

"These weren't trials, Castiel," Metatron told him absently, pulling a small crystal vial from his pocket and holding it a few inches from the cut that glowed silver-blue with the angel's Grace. "They were a spell, and what I'm taking from you now – your Grace – your … _potentis angeli,_ actually, is the last piece."

He screwed the cap on and smoothed his hand over the cut in Castiel's throat. "And now, something … wonderful … is going to happen. For me and for you."

"I doubt that."

"An angel with doubt," Metatron said, smiling widely. "You continue to surprise me, Castiel. I am giving you a chance to find a new life. A life of feeling and doubt, conflict and resolution, hopefully – and yes, let us not forget hope – a life that will give you the experience of our Father's Creations … from the ground up, let us say."

"I am an angel!" Cas struggled against the bindings.

"Not any longer," Metatron said dismissively. "Now, you are Fallen. And provided you are reasonably careful not to get yourself killed, your lifespan should be considerable. And you will not be alone, down there."

He lifted his hand and touched Castiel's forehead and the angel felt himself … falling.

* * *

_**Jackson, Minnesota**_

"Just let it go," Dean said, stepping toward Sam, his voice gentle again as the tangled emotions rushed through him, relief and frustration and hope and love.

"I can't," Sam said unsteadily, shaking his head and holding up the cut hand. Dean looked down at it and pulled a clean bandana from his jacket. "It's in me, Dean, you don't know what this feel like –"

"Hey, listen to me," he said, catching Sam's hand and hiding his shock at the heat in it as he wrapped the cloth around the palm. "We will figure this out, okay?"

"Come on," he said, looking up at the doubt in Sam's face. He pulled his brother into a hug, feeling the tremors that rattled Sam's frame and tightening his hold. "Let it go, okay? Let it go, Sammy."

Sam closed his eyes, Dean's scent filling his nostrils, the lifelong familiar comfort of that smell dragging out memories that flashed by too quickly to recognise. He needed his brother, he thought, maybe more than Dean needed him. Dean could walk away, even if it broke his heart to do it, but the only way Sam could go was if his brother was dead. He'd thought it was the other way round, for a long time. When he'd lost himself after failing to find any way into Purgatory, he'd realised that it wasn't. And that had called into question what else he'd been telling himself over the years. All the lies he'd believed because he couldn't face the truth. The demon anger, that mindless, black, insistent anger, had lashed out at anything and everything to avoid having to look at that. Now he could see it. And now … now he could feel it too.

The power rose abruptly, pinprick acid pain in his nerves, a wildfire in his blood and he looked at the light that flared under his skin, his eyes widening as he watched it dim and disappear completely, taking the pain with it.

"Hey," Sam said, pulling away and holding his arms out. Dean looked down, seeing Sam's skin, knotted over the muscles tensed in his arms as he rotated both inward and outward.

"See?" Dean looked up at him, mouth lifting to one side as he saw relief filling Sam's face.

Sam's guttural scream filled the church as agony filled his chest, dropping to his knees as both hands were snatched back and pressed hard over his heart, shocking Dean to statue-stillness for a second.

"Sam, what the hell –" Dean dropped in front of him, trying to see anything that would explain the sudden pain. "What's happening?"

"Gah –" Sam lifted his head, his eyes wide and staring as he tried to pull in a breath and his lungs refused to work.

Dean swore and grabbed his brother's arm, dragging it over one shoulder as he straightened up, half-lifting, half-dragging Sam along with him to the doors.

"I gotcha, little brother," he grunted, easing Sam down the shallow steps. "You're gonna be just fine!"

Even to him it sounded more bravado than truth, Sam's wheezing breath loud in his ears as he tried to let him down gently beside the car. Sam's mouth opened wide as his chest constricted further, and Dean saw his ribcage struggling to lift as his brother tried to get air. "Sam? Sam!"

"Cas!" He looked around the small area of flattened ground. "CASTIEL!"

He looked back at Sam, pressing his palm against Sam's heart, feeling the juddery, uneven beating against it.

"Where the hell are you?" he muttered furiously, yanking at the front of Sam's shirt and dropping his head to press his ear against the chest. He could hear a little air movement in there, but it was as if Sam's lungs had been constricted to barely hold a thimbleful of air, no matter how much his brother was fighting to drag in more.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Kevin looked at the angel tablet. After overhearing the conversation between the angels, he couldn't imagine what use it would be to anyone to know the trials or anything on the tablet. He left it there and grabbed his stuff, crossing the war room and climbing the stairs. The one thing he wasn't sure about was the key. He couldn't exactly mail it back to the brothers and he wasn't sure it was a good idea to try and hand it back face to face.

He'd reached the gallery level when the alarms starting going off, a red light flashing on above the door and clicks, trilling, buzzing, whistling and whirring come from the room below him. Leaning over the railing, he looked around the room.

The war room was lighting up. He watched the radios, tape decks, and control station go through their start up procedures, lights coming on one after the after on the machines along the walls. Almost directly below him, the map table lit up and he saw the red marker lights coming on, not one at a time but dozens, hundreds, in locations all over the world.

Something was happening, he thought, staring down. Something that had triggered every alarm the order had devised or could think of, alarms telling of a disaster that didn't have anything to do with this plane of existence, but of the others.

* * *

_**Maplewood State Park, Minnesota**_

Castiel woke, the rich, strong scents of woodland filling his nose and his vessel chilled by the cold night air. He rolled over, getting to his feet unsteadily as he felt a peculiar singing sensation in his mind. The tree cover above blocked out too much and he started to walk through the woods, moving faster as the singing became louder. He reached the lakeshore and he looked up.

Across the black night sky he saw them, pinpoints of light with fiery long tails, falling as he had, not a few but hundreds, filling the sky with the incandescence of their descent.

_Metatron had cast them all out_, he thought disbelievingly. _All of them_.

* * *

_**Jackson, Minnesota**_

In the church, Crowley heard the cries, his eyes snapping open.

* * *

"Sammy," Dean said, pulling at his brother's shoulder as Sam began to tip toward the ground.

Sam couldn't speak. Nothing was getting through, no matter how hard he tried to make the muscles work. He could hear the desperation and fear in Dean's voice, but he couldn't say or do anything to help him understand. He didn't understand himself.

Light caught his peripheral vision and his eyes turned toward it, just catching the end of the flaming tail of the meteorite before it hit the ground. And his chest eased, the next breath deeper. Quieter. Not so hard.

"Dean –" he gasped, and felt Dean's arm circle his shoulders.

"What?"

"I think it's –"

They both turned to look at the sky when they heard it – a rushing, crackling sound, like a satin sheet shaken out, or a monstrous wildfire, distantly heard.

Beside him, Dean stared at the sky, seeing the clouds lit up as the bodies passed through them. "No, Cas," he murmured, knowing what those lights were, knowing what he was seeing.

The sky was filled with meteorites, Sam thought disconnectedly, the long tails blurred and distorted in his vision.

"What's happening?" he asked Dean.

Dean glanced down at him, seeing his chest rise and fall more fully. "Can you breathe?"

Sam nodded, staring past him at the sky. He saw a shape, in flames, his eyes widening as the great wings were burned up and fell away and the humanoid figure hit the river, sending huge clouds of steam from the surface.

Dean turned his head to look back at them, his gaze tracking the plummeting figures across the sky. Was Cas one of them?

"Angels," he told his brother, his voice hushed in awe. "They're falling."

* * *

**THE END OF SEASON 8 - REIMAGINED**


End file.
